The Baron was exactly the kind of man who looked a gift horse in the mouth, inspected the teeth, and complained about rotten molars. As he followed Schuler out of the Caretaker’s room and into a narrow hall, he sought to understand their prompt evacuation. “Why would you take us to Tweed? Why not keep us locked up until Enzu comes, like I asked?”
Schuler paused, fixing them with a glare while adjusting his bifocals with a wrinkle of his nose. “Enzu will be fighting! As will you!”
“The Baron won’t,” the Zombie muttered, stopping in the Baron’s shadow.
d’Holbach raised a hand for momentary silence. “Schuler, I need to understand. You could keep us safe in that room with the Cat. Why pull us out?”
“Because there’s no purpose there!” Schuler said hurriedly. “Don’t you understand?” He swept around and started walking again. “Follow me!”
The Baron jolted into motion, trailing close behind him, and the Zombie continued to track at their heels. “I don’t understand,” d’Holbach admitted.
“When the gods demand action, I live with purpose!” Schuler reached a stairwell door at the end of the hall, throwing it open with a defiant swing of his arm.
“What do you mean?” the Baron asked, catching the door after it bounced off a wall stop.
The Diviner was stomping down the stairwell, but he answered the question loudly, sending his voice echoing up and down three stories. “Microtasks, Baron! Crumbs!”
The Baron rushed down after him, taking the steps two at a time with a hand on the railing at all times. “What about them?”
The Zombie shut the door to the third story and followed quickly.
Schuler reached the second story landing and wrenched open a wooden door, exiting directly into the heart of Tammany Hall. “The gods themselves spread crumbs! Hansel follows!” He thudded his own chest with the palm of his free hand. “But there are no crumbs here, only out there!” He gestured wildly at the wall and the world beyond. “So I hear the message! I must go out, and you must be handled. If you will accept Tweed, then fine! To him!” He waved through the open door, to the temple halls beyond. “Now, go!”
“I don’t accept anything,” the Baron said as he passed by Schuler, out of the stairwell and into a crimson-carpeted passageway. “I just wanted to talk to him.”
Specifically, d’Holbach wanted to use Tweed’s personal guards as a breakout force, at least until an opportunity to escape presented itself.
“He knows what you want!” Schuler shouted, holding the door only long enough for the Zombie to rush in after them. The Diviner clapped this last door shut, then oriented himself towards the inevitable. “Ahead. Through the main hall, and into the triumvirate’s court.”
The Baron led them onward at Schuler’s direction, skirting past lounges and offices, rushing towards the center of the building. Schuler followed in jagged bursts, and the Zombie brought up the rear, grinning with anticipation. Violence was at hand.
They were about three turns away from their destination when a porcine old man leaned out of an office up ahead, spotting the Baron at the lead. A frown screwed up his round face, bending a waxed mustache, and he tugged on his own lapels with an audible harrumph. His suit jacket—double-breasted, wool, fit more for the winter than this spring condition—was of fine quality, but decades out of date, like a living Mr. Pennybags. “Schuler?” he called, finally spying the only familiar face in this small crowd. “Are these the prisoners—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” the Diviner yelled at him. “My head hurts,” he added, a growling afterthought. “I need directions, crumbs, crumbs, crumbs…”
The old man half-shut the door in front of himself like a shield. His eyes sought the Baron, silently begging for some understanding of events, but d’Holbach only spared the stranger a nod. There was no time for social niceties.
Every second might cut the difference in the coming battle, and the Baron was looking for an opportunity to leave. If he was going to start his exit alongside Tweed, then they needed to rendezvous immediately.
“Apologies, sir!” the Zombie called at the rear, giving the porcine man a mock-salute “We’re hurrying to the Boss!”
“Why?” Mr. Pennybags asked, a single word of demand that also contained the bulk of all his fears.
The Zombie pivoted on one foot to walk backwards, answering as he left, “Men are attacking the temple! You should meet up with the rest, organize!”
“But sacred ground?” Mr. Pennybags objected, and those three words were an entire argument about culture, about the sanctity of temples against violence, and about the risk of punitive tasks against transgressors.
Good men, those with lives and responsibilities, didn’t fight inside temples. These were neutral territories until they weren’t, until someone was ready to die while desecrating holy ground. In the worst case, such a profaned place could become mundane land, and anyone in debt would simply awaken in a different sanctuary.
“They’ll attack if they can win!” the Zombie yelled cheerily, dismissing every bit of religious tradition with an acknowledgment of simple, awful power. If the enemy had enough bodies, they’d storm any shut door, even in these secluded places.
Rifles popped outside the building like firecrackers. Someone laid into a car horn for several seconds. There was more gunfire in another direction, and an eruption of voices ahead of them. The main hall lurked just out of view, filled with a leaderless tumult, likely a crowd of lesser nobles or Tammany Hall cultists. The Baron slowed, reconsidering.
“Follow or fall!” Schuler yelled, skirting past the Baron and into the main hall. After a moment’s heartbeat, where his eyes met the Zombie’s unflinching gaze, a silent agreement was struck. If a Diviner shouted such things, it truly was safest to follow his “crumbs” a little further, those little tasks of the gods that somehow guided his wizardly steps through the world.
The Zombie fell into step with the Baron, and together, they emerged into the panic of a dozen lesser nobles. These were powerful people, unused to fear. Every moment of anxiety released another exclamation of frustration, another sharp word.
Who would dare attack New York? How could they bring a force this close to the heart of Lower Manhattan? Were the guards dead? Had their posts been wiped out silently? There were no windows in the temple. Nobody could even glance outside to see the fighting.
Some younger men were clustered at the secretary’s desk, shouting into a pair of telephones at the internal operators. The switchboard women wouldn’t know the answers to their half-formed demands. They needed intelligence; they needed leadership. They had neither, though a couple of armed enforcers were stalking the crowd, urging calm against chaos.
“Sound and fury,” the Baron said to his companion.
“All idiots,” the Zombie replied.
Men stepped aside or Schuler shoved them, creating a momentary passage through the lesser nobles. The Baron and Zombie strode forward, occupying that space before it could close. An accountant had the presence of mind to open the final door ahead of them.
Out of the court came the next blows of a shouting match.
Boss Tweed struck with a roar: “Who opened the door!”
“Sir!” the accountant quailed, “The Diviner—”
“Here!” Schuler rushed in, folding and unfolding his hands in nervous twitches. The Baron and Zombie trailed after him, and the door slammed shut behind them. One crowd vanished, but this space was no quieter, if only because these men, still seated on their thrones, were used to talking with the unquestioned authority of armies.
“Our remaining security forces are entirely secular,” General Osman spoke forcefully, not bothering to question why the Baron had returned to their chambers. “Only a handful are former military. We coddled the fucking nobles and spread ourselves too thin.”
“I wasn’t going to let Manhattan slide into anarchy—” Tweed said.
“We can’t call the real soldiers back in,” General Osman continued. “Nearly all occult warriors, the trained, the armed, they’re fighting to keep our streets.”
“Many are dead now,” Gagliano suggested.
The General sneered. “You don’t know that.”
Gagliano shrugged. “We sent them out to clear Manhattan. They failed, and their radios are silent. How’s that possible, unless they’re gone?”
Osman bark-laughed once, a sharp sound of pure disdain. “We’re dealing with an occult foe, you old bookie! They only need one captured radio and a few years of prestige to preemptively silence us—station by station.” He punctuated those last words by jamming an index finger into his own palm, as if pressing the button on a terrible weapon.
“How?” Gagliano asked. “We hid most of the guard posts.”
“If it’s CPUSA, they look like civil workers,” the Baron said, deciding to insert himself on Osman’s side before this conversation spiralled back around to the same argument and wasted precious time. “Police, firemen, you name it. They’re all embedded civvies.”
“Meister Schuler, why have you brought him here?” Tweed asked sharply.
“He asked to come,” Schuler said.
“I would’ve called for him anyways,” Osman added.
The Baron spread his hands to the triumvirate. “I’m just telling you, it’s almost certainly them, same as it was in Red Hook—the Soviet fifth column.”
General Osman pointed a finger at the Baron. “He’s right, you know. We’ve run into scouts, and they’re all looking for him. This is about the Cat.”
“Which is why we have to leave,” the Baron suggested.
Boss Tweed laughed derisively, weaving his ring-encrusted fingers together across his portly belly. “I’m not leaving this building. We’re defending it!”
“Bullshit!” General Osman yelled. “I’m your gods-damn Banker! I’m heading to the nearest safe house—with the Baron! With the Cat!”
“What about us?” Gagliano murmured.
The General scoffed. “If they desecrate the temple, then you two dodge with the nobles. If they don’t, then you come with us! Either way, these are my forces, under my command!”
The Baron felt a faint satisfaction, recognizing Osman’s strategy. Dodging while inside an active temple risked returning you to the same building. However, if the enemy spilled blood on holy ground, then two things would happen. A great task would fall on the heads of the desecrators, guaranteeing their rapid demise, and the local sanctuaries would stop working. After that, all dodges would send debtors to other temples, making it easy to escape the Hall.
Unfortunately, the Baron had no prestige, and even if he’d carried some, dodging was dangerous at best. Every temple in the city was full of armed men with standing orders to arrest him, and he’d be utterly separated from the Zombie again. He needed to escape on foot.
“Are you counting Schuler?” the High Oracle asked Osman.
“Of course I am! And the Zombie, unless he wants to see his precious Baron die!” General Osman ran a hand down his tremendous white beard, a light tug of frustration on his own chin. “You don’t want that, do you, you fuckin’ devil? You want to save your kraut master?”
The Zombie nodded once, no jokes or snipes, even while Osman spat decades-old racism. “We have to leave,” he insisted calmly, repeating the Baron’s words.
General Osman grunted with satisfaction. “There you have it.” He rose to his feet with the ease of a much younger man. “Even the bloodthirsty Chinaman sees the wisdom in it. We’re leaving. With the Devil’s help.”
“Is that so?” Gagliano asked the Zombie.
The Baron watched a flicker of emotion pass over his friend’s face, but the severity of this situation forced the obvious conclusion. “It is so,” the Zombie agreed
Gagliano waved off Osman’s triumphant grin. “Fine, have it your way, General.”
Osman wasn’t a tall man, but he was broad and muscular. He faced Tweed. “You too, Boss. Unless they desecrate the temple, we have to move on foot. You have to come.”
The large man shifted in his plush throne. “Have to?” he asked, staring over his little beard at his General. “If I go outside and people recognize me, the cost of my life skyrockets. You know this. I swore, twenty-five years ago, to stand my ground—”
“You swore it when we could surround this place with guns!” General Osman shouted. “Oracle, Leader, and Banker!” He thumped himself on the chest, marking himself as the primary pool of prestige for the New York cult. “We can’t afford to lose anyone over a gods-forsaken principle. As your general, I order you both to stand up!”
Gagliano shoved his chair back a half-inch and stood. “I already agreed.”
Tweed shifted his bulk, then used both arms to lift himself out of his chair and onto his feet. “Fine. You old bastard. Fine.”
“Schuler!” Osman pointed at the wobbling madman. “Hit the boy outside with an order. Get on the horn, signal the posts. HQ will be occupied by the enemy. I want anyone within a mile to move to the safe house on 7th street. Everyone else, return to the nearest temple. The enemy should respect temple boundaries except for this Hall. Understood?”
Schuler focused in with a ripple of facial muscles like a tremendous twitch. “Yes, General!” he said with a sharp salute. “Any orders for the other nobles in the building?”
“Tell them to stand by. If the enemy desecrates the temple, all non-combatants will leave by dodging. Otherwise, we’ll secure the main hall and arrange for their escape.”
“Yes, General!” Schuler ducked through the chamber doors and started repeating these messages to a mousy young accountant, huddling just outside the triumvirate’s chambers.
“Lower Manhattan will be shutting down,” General Osman told the rest. “This also means that the fucking spooks are about to hammer us like a jutting nail.”
“Langley will?” Tweed asked.
“Of course!” Osman answered. “I know their playbook. They’ll look to occupy the Hall with the National Guard, so we need to move to a defensible position until—”
Gunshots exploded into raucous chatter underfoot. Everyone straightened, instinctively stretching away from the floor. Then the gunfire stopped.
“Tommies going off in the lobby,” Osman said, “now silenced. It’s war.” He turned towards the apartment door behind his throne. It bore no visible handle, only a brass bump where one ought to be. “I wish to open it,” he said grimly, and with a series of metallic clicks and the chunk of a jumping latch, the door swung open.
“Where are you going?” Gagliano asked him.
Osman laughed, striding through a half-shadowed hall into the poorly lit depths of his apartment. “To arm myself, Oracle!”
From this angle, the Baron could see a thickly-carpeted anteroom with walnut furnishings—a small table, a hat rack, coat hooks—opening onto a private sitting room, overburdened with leather-clad furniture and ringed in by towering bookshelves. Snippets of crimson wallpaper peeked over the arrangement like a barely restrained glare.
For an instant, the General wasn’t in view, but from one side, there arose a clatter of wood against wood, like someone drawing lumber from a pile. Then a black-green crescent thrust into the antechamber, shimmering like a peacock feather, followed quickly by a long black haft clenched in Osman’s tremendous hands.
The Zombie spoke faster than anyone else, and his grin audibly shaped every word of appreciation. “Is that a fucking magic guandao?”
The General strode out of his apartment into the triumvirate’s chambers, raising the guandao towards the ceiling of the court, and the door swung shut behind him, automatically locking through some similarly archaic magic. All true artifacts were at least five centuries old—the door’s mechanism was salvaged from a 13th century French fortress, for example—but the guandao was likely far older, and it bore all the fantastic decorations of its era and place, unspoiled by time or combat.
Osman grinned with pride. “This is the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, as written in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the greatest of all Chinese novels! The weapon is a masterwork, a tenth century artifact from a Song artificer, made in the folkloric image of Guan Yu’s legendary blade. It was forged nearly four centuries before any oral tradition became a written word! I’d wager the legend itself begins in this artifact, this weapon of great and terrible war!”
From the cadence of his words, anyone could hear that General Osman was reciting a long-practiced speech. He twirled the weapon’s pitch-black haft, revealing the texture and shimmer of polished bituminous coal. The joint between its pole and blade was gold-plated and decoratively shaped like the mouth and forelimbs of the namesake dragon. The counterweight was similarly plated and styled to represent the tail and hindlimbs of the beast.
The crescent blade itself erupted from the dragon’s mouth like a gout of black flame. One edge was as sharply defined as the curve of the moon; the other was spiked like the licking tongues of a bonfire. But it wasn’t truly steel, nor even a chemically colored metal. The blade was a product of wishes through and through, shimmering like a bird’s feather or a beetle’s shell, void black at some angles and rippling vividly green at others.
“It’s a weapon from fiction?” the Zombie asked cheekily.
“Ha! It’s a threat, a display of power. If someone mistook it for a legend, all the better.” The General gently tilted the blade, admiring its shifting colors overhead. “It’s one of the few magic weapons on the planet that rivals or surpasses military-grade hardware. And you?” Osman lowered the peacock-green blade till it vaguely pointed at the Zombie himself. “You will scout for us. Walk ahead, call out enemy positions, and I will cut them down where they hide. If you do that, your precious Baron will survive.”
“I love being threatened with a good time,” the Zombie replied.
“Can the Cat survive it?” Gagliano asked, looking towards the Zombie’s left hand.
“That artifact? Absolutely,” Osman said. “It’s made to survive anything lethal to man. Hell, it’s been struck with an Apple of Perun. On record no less! They found it in a pile of burning ashes, unblemished. Cool to the touch.” He shook the guandao. “This wouldn’t even budge the damn thing. The only object that’s tougher is the Zombie himself.”
“Fascinating,” Gagliano muttered.
“Schuler,” Osman commanded, “I’ll need you to monitor the building. If I hit a support strut, fix it. I don’t want the third story to fall on our heads.”
“Yes, General,” Schuler said.
“And keep me apprised of the temple’s status.”
“Desecrated,” Gagliano said softly.
Everyone in the room paused. It was such a perfectly timed and terrifyingly specific result. There’d been no sounds of gunfire, which meant someone had just died in silence.
“Speak again?” Boss Tweed asked.
“Seconds ago,” Gagliano replied, “the gods placed a large task on the heads of five men, damned for profaning holy ground. The payout is decades, more than enough to justify fighting over every last inch of this building.” He glanced at Osman. “Think our enforcers can clear out CPUSA before the National Guard moves in? We’d need them all.”
“Of course! To the man!” Osman said, raising the guandao like a flag.
“To the man,” Tweed agreed quickly. “And don’t let the Baron distract us from this task.”
The Baron felt a spike of frustration. “What distraction? What are you expecting from me?”
Osman gestured to the other members of the triumvirate. “Gentlemen, hand me your pools and dodge to Greenwich. I’ll retrieve you once Manhattan is cleared.”
High Oracle Gagliano promptly shook hands with Osman, saying quietly, “All but a half a day.” He took a deep, sorrowful breath, then blew it out like a sigh.
Osman moved onto the next figure. “Tweed,” he said, offering to shake the Boss’s hand.
Tweed waved him aside with an irritated grunt. “Don’t bother. I wish for six years, three months, nine days, and twelve hours of renewed youth and vigor.” Instantly, he vanished into debt, leaving only the pop of a collapsing vacuum. Outside the room, the collective volume of the lesser nobles audibly rose from a murmur to a furor.
High Oracle Gagliano was hesitating before he dodged, staring at the Baron.
General Osman looked over at the Oracle. “Why are you still here?”
Gagliano pointed at the Baron. “Schuler, does he have any prestige?”
The Diviner blinked, reeling from the question, but answered with clipped, quick words: “No. He didn’t dodge me this morning. He’s empty.”
“You don’t know that,” the Baron said quickly, even though it was true. On reflection, he really should’ve asked Phyllis to hand him another half day. It wouldn’t have made a strategic difference, but it might’ve made a tactical one, and it would’ve undermined New York’s strategy.
“I trust his judgement,” Gagliano muttered.
“Get to safety, Oracle,” Osman ordered.
Gagliano nodded, wrinkling his smashed nose. “Penny in my left pocket.” Another clap of collapsing air, and the High Oracle was gone, leaving only four men in the room.
Osman swiveled to face toward the main hall, planting the counterweight of the guandao against the floor. He posed, ready to command his nobility. “Schuler, open the door!”
Schuler spun about and threw open the court door, slamming the knob into the wall outside. For a second, the thud of the impact silenced all conversations. A dozen faces snapped to Osman, wordlessly waiting to receive the guidance of their General.
“Everyone,” General Osman bellowed, “spread the word! This is no longer holy ground! Non-combatants, transfer all excess prestige to the nearest enforcers, then dodge to another temple! Fighters, be ready to occupy territory after Schuler and I sweep through!”
Instantly, the crowd broke out into a series of shouts, seeking both to accept and give away prestige. Power was rapidly flowing from lesser nobles to a handful of occult guards, and as they finished their transfers, the non-combatants vanished. The air cracked repeatedly, a series of small imploding vacuums, summing up to the thunder of a rout.
The Baron stepped closer to the Zombie. “Be ready,” he whispered, inaudible beneath the tumult of magical teleportation. “I’ll find our moment.”
The Zombie nodded, even as he stared out at the chaos of evacuation with a grin.
A middle-aged man in a guard uniform came running up the hall to Osman, a Tommy swinging at his hip. “Sir, we’ve lost control of the main lobby!”
“Seargent Wade!” Osman called, waving him close. “Report?”
Sgt. Wade ignored the vanishing nobility, delivering prompt intel: “We observed and approached an armed party in Union Square Park. On contact, they opened fire, killing one and injuring two, then fell back to the trees. Lt. Decoin sallied out with the majority of our forces to surround and root them out. Once they were engaged, a strike force deployed from cars on 17th and rushed us through the north entrance.”
“One feint, one real attack,” the Baron whispered to the Zombie.
The Zombie chuckled, smoothing down the front of his blue dress shirt like a preening bird. The battlefield was his domain, but strategy was the Baron’s, and d’Holbach had correctly predicted another move from their opponents.
“Where’s Decoin now?” General Osman asked the sergeant.
“Pushing up 17th street, fighting to get back in.”
“The attackers, all occult?” the General probed.
“Well-funded, General. They jammed the guns, overpowered the secular crew. They’re sweeping the first floor now, pushing into the second.”
“Did any secular officials retreat to their offices?”
“Yes, General, but the attacking force is wishing locks open.”
“Why?”
“They’re moving everyone into the speaking hall.”
“Any cover story?”
“Someone got a call up to an administrator before the attackers reached the switchboard. They’re claiming they’re here to take revenge on the Lucchese family. Everyone hears that they’re aiming for Gagliano. They know he isn’t dead.”
“Mm. He’s not their primary target,” Osman judged, “but they’re pulling a cover story and minimizing secular casualties. Our plan should be the same. We’ll hide the occult dead and keep the official body count down.”
“What about our escape, Osman?” the Baron asked.
Osman cast him a plain glance, no longer scowling. “We take the north stairwell to the ground floor, then break through the wall onto 17th street. From there, we circle east around the block and hit alleys heading south. It’s about ten minutes on foot to the safe house on 7th. I trust you’ll cooperate and make this easy for us? For Schuler?”
“Of course, General,” the Baron answered, even as he mentally scoured the plan for obvious holes. His best bet would be to find a breakaway point on the ground floor, where the Zombie could run interference against Schuler and Osman at the same time.
If he could get out of the building, New York would be tied up with suppressing the fifth column, and they wouldn’t be able to give chase. The Zombie would easily catch up, and then they’d look for a place to rendezvous with Phyllis, starting back at the Artemisian safe house on Canal street. If they could find her, they’d take any help they could get. And if they couldn’t? Then they’d simply make their way to Denisov on their own.
A question passed through the Baron’s mind. Where was Phyllis right now? Did she really instigate this conflict? Or was the CPUSA acting on their own?
Unless the mercenaries delivered the Cat to Malik today, all former party members were going to be exposed. No matter what, this battle would be CPUSA’s final hurrah.
The last of the nobles vanished, leaving behind only two armed enforcers. One of them was an old man with a souvenir Luger from the war. He was counting loose bullets and dropping them in an old army coat pocket. The other was a young man in a suit with a greasy looking M1 Garand, recently pulled out of storage and scraped free of waxy, half-dry cosmoline. His pockets bulged with clips full of rifle rounds, both pants and jacket alike.
“Lieutenant Sadgrove! Mr. Roach!” Osman said, smiling with familiarity. “How is your prestige?”
“Fresh years, General,” the old man said in a soft British accent. He must’ve been Lt. Sadgrove; two off-white cloth pips rested on a dark green shoulder mark, indicating his rank in WW1.
“That’s a full count on fleeing nobles,” the young man added curtly. “We can cut loose, General.” He must’ve been Mr. Roach.
“Any other enforcers still in the building?” Osman asked them.
Lt. Sadgrove blinked with calm eyes. “Top floor, Thurston and Oaks are guarding the stairwells. Ground floor, Guerra and Cecil are roaming. We’re making hell, General.”
The Baron noted Guerra’s name—that’d be Enzu, already fighting.
“Good. Sadgrove, cover the Baron. Make sure he’s safe.”
“Yes, General,” Sadgrove muttered.
“Schuler, Mr. Roach, take spotter positions. Wade, you’ll stay by me. I’ll manage artillery while the Zombie scouts.”
“Can do, General,” Mr. Roach said.
“Yes, General,” Sgt. Wade added with a salute.
Everyone arranged themselves as ordered—the Zombie at point with General Osman right behind him—and they marched forward through the open court door and into the main hall. The Baron followed slowly, feeling the presence of Lt. Sadgrove at his back.
The hall leading out through the main temple door was already cleared. The dull glow of chandeliers cast deep shadows behind the furniture and into the doors of unlit lounges. All doors to offshoot halls were now shut, but the Zombie was approaching the double-doors to the main thoroughfare, the winding hallway that’d take them out of this place.
“Clear the line, Baron,” Lt. Sadgrove suggested. The Baron complied immediately, moving towards the left wall and some semblance of indoor cover.
Osman stopped one step to the left of the doors, facing the wall. He gestured, and the guard with the Tommy moved up to the right, crouching beside the doorjamb. A few yards back, Mr. Roach lay prone near a seating bench that he could roll under, sighting his rifle.
Meister Schuler wore the same combat clothes from this morning, but he quickly pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, flexing them with soft creaks. Then reached up with his middle finger and shoved his lustrous copper bifocals half an inch up the bridge of his nose.
Osman snapped his fingers at the Zombie and pointed at the door, then shifted his pose, lifting that massive guandao into a head-down chopping stance. It was time to scout the enemy.
The Zombie grinned, nodded, and opened the doors to an empty hall.
The invincible man listened to the squeal of poorly oiled hinges, dragged down by solid wood panels. His gaze flickered along the empty hall, sighting all the lounges and offices that were now abandoned. Doors had been left open, providing a plethora of hiding spots. He’d hoped for roving squads, masses of fifth column fighters. Instead, he found a tangle of possible enemy positions, which needed flushing out before his vulnerable friend could escape.
The temple’s blessing was broken, so a murder had already happened somewhere on the second floor. At least one enemy was in here, waiting in ambush near a civilian corpse.
So he did his best to look mortal. He skulked and skirted close to the right wall, shuffling his shoes a little too loudly on the carpeted floors. He glanced into open rooms, peeking into corners and beneath desks. Men might lurk in the shadows cut by yellowing incandescent bulbs. Across various lounges and parlors, a few of the ubiquitous televisions remained lit but muted, displaying black-and-white images of daytime talk shows and soap operas, illuminating the odd angles of their rooms with the soft snowy glow of phosphorescence. The twin smells of cigarettes and liquor drifted at the edges of awareness like a kiss of fog.
Up until a minute ago, rich nerves had been dulled with drugs. Now, those wealthy and weak men had been cast across the city, assured that their dodges wouldn’t return them to the heart of danger.
The Zombie imagined the feelings of those elites, and he faked a fearful breath, tasting the air. He could almost detect the dripping sweat of human adrenaline. It wasn’t a real sensation, merely instinct impressed upon the empty darkness, but somehow, he knew someone was looking at him, waiting for a moment of inattention. Then a gun would be pointed, a trigger pulled. He shuddered as he stepped further along the hall, seemingly alone.
A creak of a human joint, a bent limb turning through a frozen position. The click of some metal part moving softly in a turned mechanism; not an action of any kind, but a new settling to the Zombie’s left. He twitched, looking sharply towards the sound.
Around the edge of one of the open lounge doors, a CPUSA merc with a Thompson SMG was standing with one shoulder leaning against the jamb, sighting the barrel at the Zombie. His well-worn uniform, the cropped haircut, the wrinkle of his clean-shaven jowls—another WW2 vet had become a labourer and Communist, only to be coerced into becoming part of the Soviet fifth column. A cold expression locked onto his face; he’d already settled his heart, accepting both his own death and the murder of other men. Nevertheless, he hesitated. Pity for the weak? For the fearful? His army had killed children just yesterday. He should fear vengeance.
The merc lifted a finger to his lips, an order for silence.
The Zombie opened his eyes wide, raising both hands, and he shouted, “Don’t shoot!”
The CPUSA merc looked similarly alarmed at the shout. “On the floor!” he whisper-yelled, a voice of heavily restrained frustration, pointing with his barrel in lieu of a free hand.
“I didn’t see you behind the door!” the Zombie cried in faux-panic.
Then Mr. Roach, far back in the main hall, quietly declared, “Left.”
The Baron watched General Osman carefully, attempting to understand the function of the artifact-weapon in his broad hands. Did the magic guandao have an activation ritual? A word or phrase? A secondary artifact to signal ownership?
Osman took two deft steps with the verve of a young man—one back, one left—lining himself up with the offices and lounges that branched off to the left of the main hallway. Then he planted the counterweight of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade onto the carpeted floor behind himself, and he struck a martial pose. This was in fact a ritual, maybe even a critical one. His left hand balled into a fist at his beltline, and then he sharply spread his palm flat and launched his arm outward under tension, raising it smoothly up through an arc over his head, before bringing it back down like the edge of a blade to stop in front of his chest.
In all of that preparatory motion, there was neither doubt nor awkwardness. The General exuded confidence and strength. The weapon might very well have only responded to the hands of a martial master, but even if Osman’s wealth had purchased the privilege of holding it, the man had clearly sweated at practice and earned the right to wield it.
“Hah!” the General barked, sweeping out with his right foot to hook the polearm just above the counterweight. He kicked the pole up towards his dividing palm, rotating the guandao around its center of gravity just beneath the dragon’s head, and with a clap of wood, he caught the haft, gripping it in both hands for an overhead swing. The rest came in one motion, a step backwards and a swift chop downwards—right in front of the wall—cutting a strange band of violet light into the air beyond the blade’s glimmering green edge.
Meister Schuler clapped his hands over his ears.
The Baron failed to mimic him in time.
From the Zombie’s perspective, there was a sudden violet shine emanating from the air around the mercenary, as if someone had tracked a crystal prism into a thin stream of sunlight, refracting the bluest edge of the rainbow across a layer of flowing dust.
The merc saw it too; the rainbow’s arc slashed a diagonal through his body for a quarter second, the duration of a single human thought, preconscious and without words.
The Zombie’s instincts interpreted the sign. This magic traced the arc of severing, but left no time to react. Cruel. Muscles twitched to start a smile—
Violet instantly flickered through blue, cyan, brightening explosively down the rainbow until its green flash overwhelmed both vision and logic, becoming so bright it was sound, folding this colorful arc of the world up into itself and sweeping it away on a thunderous slash. A blade-thin layer of wall, firearm, mercernary—his ribs, blood, guts, living flesh—all exploded into the shape of the rainbow itself, spread on the green as a shrapnel blast of powdered plaster, shattered lath, insensate limbs, and lazily tumbling halves of a severed torso. The shockwave of the rainbow’s passage smashed the Zombie’s stolen bowler off his head like he was staring at a stick of blasting dynamite. Green then burst like confetti, dissolving rapidly through yellow, orange, before easing into a red haze that was half misted blood and half a rainbow’s ending.
“Wow!” the Zombie cried with delight, inaudible over the clatter and splash of tumbling debris. Part of the nearby wall was cracking free, unsupported.
The confetti of green resolved itself, falling out of the fading red haze into a brief rain of jade flakes, flitting down lazily through the air like the shed scales of a passing green dragon. “Nice touch!” the Zombie added, giving praise to a thousand year dead Song artificer for understanding the art of terror. The Green Dragon Crescent Blade didn’t only cut with spectacle and inform its victims of their demise. Jade confetti signed every slash like a signature.
The Zombie looked down at the dead man’s face. Not even surprised, only confused. The overpressure of the blast-slash had knocked the merc clean off this mortal coil. If he’d wished for the afterlife, then he’d have a hell of a story to tell in the lands of the dead.
“Target?” called Mr. Roach from afar.
“Dead!” the Zombie declared, turning away from the body to look for his hat. “Absolutely fucking killed!” he roared, finding the half-crumpled bowler across the hall.
The Baron clapped his hands to his ears, a meaningless gesture at this point. The Green Dragon Crescent Blade wasn’t as loud as a bomb, nor even as loud as a cannon, but it was somewhere on the order of lightning strike just outside your bedroom window. It was bright, alarming, and then thunderous rumbles were echoing through his chest and shuddering across the building, shaking windowpanes in their frames.
“Bedlam,” Lt. Sadgrove whispered behind the Baron.
Before the debris cleared, Schuler cried, “Support!”
General Osman planted the pole of the guandao on the floor. “I hit something?” he called to the Diviner. “I thought I was careful.”
Schuler adjusted his bifocals with a twitch of his nose. Copper frames glimmered beneath the light of ancient bulbs. “Main steel beam, General. It holds now.”
“Good!” Osman declared. “Good! One down, one dead, and every last one of those Commies to go!” He waved for everyone to rise. “Prepare to move! Zombie, lead on!”
Lt. Sadgrove broke away from the wall first, following orders.
The Baron unhunched his shoulders, standing to his full height and following the lieutenant. With this kind of firepower in play, the standards of secrecy were already loosening. New York was firing off powerful magic weapons in the middle of Manhattan, and that boded poorly for any conflicts coming this afternoon. A taboo broken only once might be forgiven, still enforced; a taboo broken a hundred times was no taboo at all.
Many, many men were going to die today. The Baron would have to make damn sure that he wasn’t one of them. He had to find a way out of this madness.
Author’s Note:
For fun, let’s talk about magical, historical inaccuracy!
There’s always some when it comes to an urban fantasy novel set in the historical past, but this arc is where we begin to deliberately diverge in clear, undeniable ways. In our world, there wasn’t a battle in Union Square in 1952, yet in this world, that battle has begun. In our world, Tammany Hall was owned by an international union for garment workers, and the Society of St. Tammany had already dissolved; in this world, Tammany Hall is owned by a magically-preserved Boss Tweed. In our world, New York wasn’t gripped in a crisis of Communist infiltration; in this world, the National Guard is already rolling through the streets, setting up checkpoints.
This isn’t exactly our world anymore. It probably hasn’t been an exact match for a long time, so why have the same people been born into it?
Last chapter was a gesture towards an explanation, which I think would be fun to discuss openly. We saw some rumblings from Schuler about the gods picking and choosing elements to alter, to hew towards a particular course for history. That mechanism, however obscure and minute, is part of a broader recognition that this world diverges from our expectations at least a little bit. If we’re going to take this setting very, very seriously, we may need some explanation for how the same people have been born in that world as in our world.
The rest of the explanation, which we will eventually assemble, comes from the Baron’s philosophy. This doesn’t mean the Baron is right, but it is a gesture towards one narrative that could explain the difference. Look forward to arc 18 for that last piece, but feel free to speculate in the comments.
Suffice to say, I think this will be a very entertaining historical tension. It is a small set of deliberate differences, so that this story may expand into its final, violent act. Enjoy!
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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