American Craftsmen (26 page)

Scherie nodded at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “It’s like you.” She was right; the magic had a Morton feel, hidden beneath whatever commanding craft forced it on.

Scherie shuddered. “I’m going to tell it to leave now.”

The Appalachian gripped her wrist. “Not yet.”

“Why not?” said Scherie. “It’s horrible. It’s very, very wrong.”

“Tactics,” I said. “They don’t know what you can do yet. Neither do we. You strike now, you give them time for a counterstrike. Wait until we’re ready to take advantage of the surprise.”

Scherie jumped back as Grandpa and Dad manifested in combat uniform. “Having fun yet?” asked Dad.

“Shut your lip,” said Grandpa.

I stepped closer to Scherie. The light from my lantern lit her face like a ritual mask. “So, what can you do?”

“I don’t know,” said Scherie.

“She doesn’t,” said the Appalachian.

“How can she not know?” I shook my head. We were back to where we started.

“Honey,” said the Appalachian, turning up the maternal a bit strong, “when you were little, did you ever see anything funny, as in strange?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Scherie.

“Uh huh.” The Appalachian seemed to be interested in something on the floor of the mine.

“You know, imaginary friends,” said Scherie.

“Imaginary,” repeated the Appalachian, tracing her finger on the wall. “That’s ordinary enough. What were they like?”

“They were uncles and aunts and other people I hadn’t seen before.” The Appalachian didn’t respond, so Scherie continued. “Some of them weren’t very nice.”

“Not so friendly,” said the Appalachian. “What did you do?”

“I told mother. Mama smiled and told me that all I had to do was tell the ghosts to go away, and they would. And they did.”

“And they never came back,” said the Appalachian.

“No,” said Scherie. “Would they come back, if I asked?”

“Interesting idea,” said the Appalachian. “Probably not the time to find out. Anyhow, seems obvious why you haven’t noticed your talent until now.”

“Which is?” asked Scherie.

I interrupted. “I’ve been a blind fool.” She had been the obvious source of the massive healing at the motel, in the very same room, yet I had missed it. “How the hell did she get below my radar?”

“I’m right here, you know,” said Scherie.

The Appalachian laughed. “We’ve all been blind fools, but not the way you’re thinking. Any fool could’ve seen what’s happening, ’cept for the fledgling camouflage. That’s how a new craftsperson survives long enough to defend her or himself. Surely, someone told you about the birds and the bees. Surely, someone taught you how a Family is born.”

Grandpa and Dad looked at each other doubtfully.

“Forget that for now,” I said. I looked at Scherie. She had left things out of her story, enormous things of anger and loss. “Back to tactics. We go up. Then what?”

Scherie said, “We go for the bridge.”

The Appalachian sighed. “I can’t leave. Not now, not even for a bit.”

“They’ll expect us to go that way anyway,” I said. But I had another reason not to run, a sudden certainty. I didn’t think much of my own farsight, but this oracle felt right: if the third Gideon, Sakakawea, was there, she had to die.

Die.
The fossilized plant life of two hundred million years pressed down on my head, trying to turn me to coal. I thrust my hands out to keep the walls away.

“What’s wrong?” asked Scherie.

“I’m a little … claustrophobic.”

The Appalachian made an impolite cough. Grandpa piped in. “The technical term is taphephobia. Fear of being buried alive. A family affliction.”

“Thanks for sharing,” I said, trying to distract Scherie from such lines of thought. I gave a hard stare at Grandpa and Dad, but they met my gaze with surprising substance. I tried to look through them, and could not. Like the other dead here, they were as opaque as life.

“How long until the dead have their next battle of the republic?” I asked.

The Appalachian bared her teeth at me. “You want to manipulate Valhalla. That’s dangerous. Worse, it’s wrong. The dead are resting here. They’re not your weapons.”

“You know that those men and women out there would die all over again for what we’re trying to do,” I said.

“Some of them,” said the Appalachian.

“You could tell them what to do,” I said.

“You know they don’t talk,” said the Appalachian.

“They were aware of us yesterday,” said Scherie “They tried to kill us.”

“Right,” said the Appalachian. “Too many of ’em hate it here. They’ll be as eager to join in their own destruction as they were when alive. This is not a peaceable kingdom, a city on a hill. This is an Alamo in a civil war.”

“Just talk to them,” I said.

“Even if they hear me, only a few will listen.” She thumbed at Scherie. “Maybe the fledgling might say a word.”

“Maybe,” I said, reluctantly. That would be shooting blind. “In any case, we’ll use them for cover.” That meant we’d have to blend in. None of the armies looked like they were wearing my synthetic outdoor gear. I took off my expensive jacket, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, and ripped my pants. The others imitated me without question.

With my last rip, I had my plan. “So here’s how we destroy them.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

With the patience of a true predator, Sakakawea had not moved since the explosion. She knew better than most the difficulty of killing a magus. Her commander’s Red Death puppet had escaped a worse trap at the Morton estate. She herself had been buried … no good remembering that.

Sakakawea sniffed. A Morton still lived, and the guardian of this place still lived. Hard to say where below, but it didn’t matter. If Morton managed to see daylight again, she would have overwhelming force to finish him off.

She gave orders to her living task force. “Kill the man on sight, if you can. Bag the women and bring them to me. Ignore the historical holograms.” They didn’t question her reasons for thinking the targets alive; they didn’t have more logic than sense. She sent one of her men to cover the bridge, enough to slow her quarry down if they fled.

She gave orders to the sympathetic revenants, the “historical holograms” of H-ring speak. She spoke with the dead glibly—metempsychosis was good for that. Psychosis without the metem was good for the talking, but not the listening. She spoke to the departed dark sides of the Families and to all who had in life tried to tear America apart. She spoke to those men without a country who had said, “Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

Some of the dead remembered reasons to hate Dale Morton; one of them was from that botched business in the desert. Sergeant Zanol would join her reserve guard; like the others, he was not celebrity evil, just an efficient killer.

Chimera’s dark magic helped persuade the reluctant. He knew how to compel all the facets of death, save his own.

Her opponents would also use the dead, whatever the guardian’s scruples. Sakakawea’s revenants would eliminate the cover provided by the spirits of the enemy. The Civil War was the last time so many ghosts had entered living combat; Sakakawea would enjoy their erasure.

She was patient, but not when she had other opportunities for fun, like a battle for the soul of the nation. So despite her preternatural focus, she missed the first stirrings of prey at the outhouse two hundred yards away from the main shaft. But this was just a quibble of seconds. She silently signaled to her team the direction of the enemy. Morton, the guardian, the Sanctuary—she’d kill all her birds with one strike.

*   *   *

In the dark mine, we breathed, we focused, we recharged. The three magi were ready. It was good ground.

The Appalachian crawled up first. This land, shifting like an enormous chameleon, would hide her. I went up second. The exit was camouflaged as an old-fashioned wooden outhouse, complete with a quarter-moon window in the door. The camouflage was too authentic, though the filth was mostly spectral.

The Appalachian scrambled outside. No enemy response to the open door, so it must be hidden from their line of sight. I waited for Scherie to come up; I would go last to screen our retreat. I pointed the direction, and Scherie dashed from the exit with me on her heels.

Shots fired. I skewed them barely as much as necessary. Rounds nicked bits of loose clothing and the ground right beneath our feet. Evil craft filled the air like fog. Dead innocents cried for me to stop. I shook off the illusion and returned fire, a couple of shots to keep our pursuers honest.

We sought cover. We found it in a cluster of ghosts moving through the enormous old trees. The ghosts themselves were substantial enough to screen us if we stayed in a crouch. For me, dozens of dead Mortons, similarly attired, would be the best blind of all. The possibility of sudden ambush made our pursuers reluctant to follow at speed; their fire diminished in frequency and accuracy.

Like medieval clockwork, the armies were lining up again for battle. The blindness worked both ways; our enemies could hide an army of the living in these ghost troops. But I knew the protocols. At most, a squad would be tasked for something this quick and secret, and of those, we only had to kill the craftsmen.

As planned, we spread out to keep our pursuers’ task difficult, ducking among the trees to different units, then slowing to blend in. Hidden with the Hutchinsons, Scherie prepared to play nurse, ripping more strips from her own clothes. The Appalachian found a loose collection of mountain men. Despite divides of time and gender, she seemed at home with Boone and Crockett look-alikes.

The math still sucked: we had small arms against an assault team. The enemy would soon overwhelm us unless I acquired our target.
Show me their sins.
At this distance, the details of their transgressions blurred, but like radar my talent showed the living through the ghosts that surrounded them because the dead had no sins. My ability wouldn’t draw a bead back on me.

I saw the opposition as a scattering of fireflies. As if sensing our tactical shift, the other side had fanned out and away. No longer in pursuit, they would wait on the outskirts for us to be flushed out like pheasants.

So, who would be doing the flushing? I searched. I searched again. On the other side of the long clearing at the center height of the low rise, one living soul alone stood with the counterregiments. A very bad girl. She glowed with more sins than could fit her distant image. That must be Sakakawea, but was she in command?
Show me her craft.

At first, I thought I’d lost craft sight; blood-red malignancy pulsed through the Sanctuary like a tick-tock aorta. But no, all of the death magic on this field radiated from her. She glowed hot with ridiculous amounts of power. Who was this Gideon really? She was way beyond her pay grade here.

Near Sakakawea stood the distinct outline of Sergeant Zanol. No surprise there.

As she had with her squad, Sakakawea had extended the counterarmy’s flanks to envelop the free unionists, to bag us all. She must be worried that we would run away again. To her strategy there was an obvious riposte, notorious for its times of failure.

I wound my way to Scherie’s oak. I whispered so my living voice wouldn’t carry. “I need them to charge the center.”

“I’ll try this group first,” she said, pointing at a cluster of perpetually wounded ghosts. She approached the revenants with her cloth strips, but they receded like a strobe-lit tide. She whispered fiercely at them, “Listen to me!” They turned, covered their ears.

From behind another tree, the Appalachian strode forward and pulled Scherie back into cover. She shook her head.

“Why aren’t you at your post?” I said.

“This is all my post,” said the Appalachian. “And if my dead don’t want to chat with a walking neutron bomb, nobody’s gonna make ’em.”

“Fine. I’ll try my connections. Remember your jobs.” I slid back through the columns of dead to my ancestors. Dad and Grandpa stood silent before me, blocking my way to Joshua. It would be wrong to try to pass through them here. “Dad, Grandpa, I need to speak with Joshua.”

They shook their heads. But, in acknowledgment of their continued connection to me, they stepped aside.

I stood next to Joshua and faced the same direction as the free union troops to avoid drawing attention. I spoke through the side of my mouth. “Sir, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need you to lead a charge up against the center of their line. It’s as crazy as Pickett’s, but the fate of the country is on the line. I need a screen of soldiers. I need to get close to their living leader.”

I glanced over at Joshua. No response. I felt less than stupid. Here I was again, praying to the ancestors. I jabbed my finger ahead in frustration. “
I need to kill her
. Extremely dead.”

Then Joshua raised his hand to his head to peer across the field at Sakakawea, and the dead man’s jaw dropped like sudden decay. Was she the one he had been searching for, or was she someone else? It didn’t matter. He began making gestures, and he began to give orders.

“Tonight we charge the center.”

The words froze my spine, because I could hear them. I looked around, and saw not the faded hues of old film, but men and women in full-colored high-def 3-D. I had been drafted into their world.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Dad. Grandpa grimaced in disgust, then peered across the field. “She looks familiar. Not good.”

It took time even for ghost regiments to redraw their lines for battle. Finally, Joshua called out, “Forward march.” The Grand Army of the Republic of the Dead stepped off the line and moved stately forward. The banners blazed, the fife pierced, and the snare code of drums made punctual pebbles that kept time with my amplified pulse. The landscape was more vivid green against grimmer trees. Beneath the music, a faint murmur of commands kept order.

I slanted from side to side at the back of the centerline to avoid being a fixed target. Were Scherie and the Appalachian seeing this, feeling this? I hoped they didn’t get distracted from the mission.