Thresholder

Flora woke up halfway through their journey back, but was too weak to move on her own. Perry could have gone faster leaping from building to building, but didn’t want to jar her too much, so relied on the sword to move them along, up high enough that he hoped they wouldn’t be seen.

Once at the apartment, he laid Flora in bed, then began taking off his armor. He was halfway through when she asked him to go into the chiller and grab something for her, so he finished quickly and followed her instructions, opening the small metal cupboard that served as her refrigerator, though cooled with a great block of ice rather than anything electrical. Compared to a refrigerator, it was tiny, holding only four jars in it, all of them containing unappetizing pieces of meat floating in water that was tinted yellow or green. He took the one she’d asked for and brought it to her, this one with small slippery red pieces of something. Liver, he was pretty sure. When she didn’t have the strength to open it, he did it for her, and she fished one out with her bare fingers, eating it quickly, not really chewing. He felt a shiver of disgust run down his spine.

Five minutes later, she’d perked up, some of her pallor having been removed, though she was still as pale as she’d been that first day they met, only a bit less sickly. Her red lips had gone pink and pallid.

“We lost?” she asked.

“No,” said Perry. “He escaped, but we were winning, I think. He was drained. His ally is dead or dying, shot once in the stomach, once in the chest.” He wished that the rounds in the armor’s gun had been higher caliber, but it had mostly been meant as a weapon of last resort rather than as a primary. In theory, you would carry a rifle with you, strapped to your back or help in your arms.

“You … shot Cormorant Wesley?” asked Flora.

“Twice,” said Perry. “He attacked us.”

“The king’s guard will be there,” said Flora. “They’re probably already there.” She started to sit up a little bit more, using her elbows, then thought better of it and laid back down.

“They were on their way as I was leaving,” nodded Perry. “It’s not ideal. We didn’t leave much in the way of evidence, there will only be Wesley’s things, which he’s already demonstrated for the public. I’ll need to go back through the footage, but I don’t think there were any witnesses to the fight. The loudest, brightest things were Wesley’s thunderclaps and the gun.”

“This is the end,” said Flora. She stared at the ceiling, looking worse than before. “This is the end of the Custom.”

“No,” said Perry. “Or not anymore than it was before.”

“I exposed myself,” she said. “They saw claws and fangs. Wings.”

Perry’s lips went tight. He wanted to tell her that it was okay, but he wasn’t sure that it was. Cosme had no idea who or what Flora was, didn’t have so much as a name for either of them, didn’t know what Perry looked like — it didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would let you uncover the Custom, he didn’t think, but he’d been wrong before.

“We lost a lead,” said Perry. “I don’t know how I’m going to find Cosme again. We should have brought more people to the ambush. The varcoli, their control of blood, he wouldn’t have been able to parry that with his staff. We could have flooded his mouth and killed him, blinded him and then slit his throat.”

“Too many people want you dead,” said Flora.

“They want me to not make a mess of their comfortable arrangement,” said Perry.

“Which we did, tonight,” said Flora. She closed her eyes and sank down into her comforter.

“Get some rest,” said Perry. “I don’t think there’s anything left to do tonight.”

Flora gave a weak nod, then dipped her fingers into the jar again without looking at it and pulled out another slimy bit of what Perry was guessing was pickled liver — pickled human liver. He took the jar when she held it out to him and returned it to the icebox, then laid on the couch with the armor's helmet on, scrubbing through the footage and having March make reconstructions, looking to see if he was right about there not being any witnesses.

They were woken in the middle of the night — deeper into the middle of the night — by a pounding on the door, which Flora limped out of bed to answer. It was her partner, saying that they’d been called up, that there was a manhunt on. She put her uniform on, hands shaking, ate more, stuffing her face above the icebox with the jars open in front of her, then told Perry that he should stay put no matter what.

“There’s a killer on the loose,” she said, giving him a grim smile.

Perry waited, keeping the armor off so that he could clean it and look at how it was holding up. It was incredibly resilient, but not impervious to damage. The place where the sword had cut into the armor would need an entire new replacement piece fabricated, and some of the servos in the left hand weren’t working quite right. Too many of the cameras and microphones were now dead, largely because they were delicate pieces of small equipment, and while Marchand did his best to compensate, these problems added up to loss of functionality. The computer was at least running fine, and the display was crystal clear, which was as much as Perry could hope for.

Flora came back around mid-morning, bringing a small paper bag with a breakfast sandwich in it. It seemed shockingly modern to Perry, though he knew relatively little history, and was mostly thankful for the food.

“They don’t know what to make of it,” said Flora. She looked run down and was still moving with a bit of stiffness. He wanted to recommend sleep, but he wasn't sure whether that was a luxury she could afford. “Signs of a battle in the backyard, blood in the basement where there’s a dead footman, Wesley and his car missing, broken windows … Apparently some of it, the parts that happened before we arrived, was seen by the servants, and they spilled everything they’d known. Cosme was named. He’s the one they’re searching for. There was some suggestion that this was a lover’s quarrel between the two of them, but I’m not sure how much anyone buys that.”

Perry nodded. “Which means the Custom is safe?”

“Safe, until the moment the King orders an investigation opened,” said Flora. “There have been witch hunts in the past, and while they get more innocents than witches, it always means that we’re watching our backs. Even the appearance of the supernatural is a threat, because it sends them sniffing in our direction. Old rumors get brought up, and in this modern age, the Century of Progress, they might have the tools to find us. The kingdom knows more about what goes on within its own borders than it ever has before. I need to speak with the Jade Council, let them know what’s happened, and hope that I can keep my head.”

What she needed was sleep, but he didn't say that. Seeing her laying in bed, wounded, had made him feel protective of her. They had fought together. He owed her.

“I’m sorry,” said Perry. “We almost got him. It was close.”

“You need to stay here,” said Flora. “Wait for the heat to die down.”

“Cosme is still out there,” said Perry. “Injured, I think. He’s more durable than a normal person, because of the bracer maybe, he heals back fast, and unless he’s got Wesley, or Wesley’s technique, I think he’s going to be short on the rubies he needs. Striking fast is still the best option.”

“You’re bruised,” said Flora. “You need your own rest. The city has just lost — literally lost, we don’t know where he is — one of its most prominent citizens, and everyone is going to be on alert, more suspicious, more capable of looking past glamours and seeing the oddness of some of their fellow man.”

Perry had a blossoming bruise on his chest, and some stiffness all over his body. The armor did a phenomenal job of protecting him, but it wasn’t perfect, and there was only so much dissipation and spreading of energy it could do. His neck in particular was hard to turn past a certain angle, and he hoped that it would heal on its own, as it was quite sore.

“So you want me to just wait here?” he asked. “Wait for Cosme to poke up his head, for him to regroup, for Wesley to be found by someone else?”

“Yes,” said Flora. “Whether Wesley is dead or alive is still unknown, though if he’s dead, he’ll be found in his automobile soon enough. And if he’s dead, we’ll have a problem, because it will be the most high-profile murder in at least a decade. I can see the headlines now, ‘The Death of the Century of Progress’.”

“They could also match the bullets,” said Perry, frowning to himself. “Or at least see that the bullets aren’t like any bullet they have here.”

“Is the man making your ammunition now a liability?” asked Flora.

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “He doesn’t have anything except my name and face, and quite a bit of my money. I’ll be careful.”

Flora nodded. “I need to keep my masters happy.”

“I’ll sit tight for now,” said Perry.

The following days passed slowly, and mostly involved being cooped up in the apartment, which felt smaller with every passing hour. The power armor recharged itself, and Perry did what maintenance he could, guided at certain points by Marchand. He combed through the data that March had collected from various places, and did a study of Teaguewater as mapped by drone. Perry spent a lot of time with Gratbook, trying to find what technological advancements and scientific understanding were within reach of the people of this world, then writing them down in a notebook that Flora had provided.

“I’m surprised you’re doing that,” said Flora, who watched him while he wrote. She’d just come home from another double shift, and was still in her uniform. The long skirt somehow still surprised him. It seemed so girly, so impractical.

“Why?” he asked. “I said that I would.”

“I thought that it might have been empty words,” said Flora. “Your helmet has a thousand books in it, you said.”

“Millions,” Perry replied. “And some of this might potentially help your people to be more ethical in their consumption of humanity.”

Flora was silent for a moment. “I’ve said that we get our corpses from those who have died without our intervention.”

“How much do you believe that?” asked Perry. He didn't stop jotting things down. He wasn’t working on anything related to biology, he was copying a diagram for a machine that would refine alumina from bauxite.

Flora was still.

“Where I come from, people liked to believe that everything was above board, but they didn’t look too hard into where things were coming from, and when push came to shove, they would push,” said Perry. “Not to sound like a cynic, but if it was a choice between starving to death or doing something ethically dubious, I think that the ethically dubious option wins out basically every time.” People didn’t really care that much about factory farms or inhumane working conditions, or slavery, or child labor, so long as it was out of sight, out of mind. He wasn’t a cynic, just a realist, and had come to accept that was how people were.

“You think that I kill people, or that people are killed on my behalf, and yet you work with me?” asked Flora.

“I do,” said Perry.

“Because you want to kill your counterpart,” she said.

“No,” said Perry. “Because … I don’t know. In the last world things were easy. Not easy, I was a soldier, a knight, fighting almost constantly, but I stepped through the portal and was part of the king’s court from almost the first day. I knew what I had to do. There were ravening hordes, a just war to fight in, an enemy that wanted me dead. Here, it’s been less clear.” He took off the helmet. “I was hoping, when we met, that you would have a direction for me, something that I could do, a way that I could slot into the world. I guess I was hoping that there were vampires to fight, but it’s factionalism, a terrible king, an enormous class divide, technology racing ahead of humanity and monsters alike — no offense.”

Her lips were thin.

“Killing Cosme, that’s my purpose here,” said Perry. “If there were something else, some way that we were fighting, a different level to it, I would do that. If it were the righteous vampires against the scoundrel industrialists, I would be on the side of the vampires. But as it stands, there are bastards on both sides, if you’ll excuse my language.”

“But you work with me anyway,” said Flora.

“You’ve been good to me,” said Perry with a shrug. “I don’t know if you’re my Ally, if the concept of allies is even a sound one, but you’ve helped me in so many ways that I can’t help but be grateful. Even if the vampires and their grand conspiracy aren’t the side of good, you’re good, and that’s something that I have to trust in.”

Flora folded her hands and was silent. “Thank you,” she finally said.

“I’ll put as much in this book as I can,” said Perry. “Information that might help you wean your people from humanity, replace morgues with abattoirs or something. Cosme had a point, though I don’t trust that he was actually altruistic.”

“What would you have done without me?” asked Flora. “If we hadn’t stumbled across each other?”

“I’d have done what he did,” said Perry. “I’d have sought out men of learning and tried to impress them with my knowledge and magic.”

“Two thresholders, fighting each other with industrialist backing,” said Flora with a shiver. “What a nightmare that would have been.”

“It’s not a nightmare now?” asked Perry.

“It’s a nightmare that’s not in full bloom,” said Flora. “There’s hope of keeping something contained, though the ant hill has been kicked.” She pulled a newspaper from her bag. It was rough quality, both in paper stock and the printing, but the headline was very familiar, big bold letters.

‘A Death Knell for the Century of Progress?’ it asked. It was almost exactly as she'd predicted.

“Betteridge’s Law of Headlines,” said Perry. “If a headline asks a question, the answer is ‘no’.” He took the paper and unfolded it, reading the main article as quickly as he could, skimming more than scanning. “Wesley hasn’t been found?”

“Not officially,” said Flora. “It’s possible that he’s been found, dead or alive, and the king is keeping everyone quiet about it. There was no covering up the incident up on Proctor’s Knob, but the king would prefer that his star scientist and the symbol of the Century of Progress hadn’t been murdered.”

“He might still be alive,” said Perry. “I wouldn’t count on it, he’d have needed immediate medical attention, but it’s possible. I reviewed the footage.”

“The video,” said Flora, rolling the foreign word around in her mouth.

“Two shots, both hits, but neither conclusively fatal,” said Perry. “I’d rather not have killed the man, though he gives me the creeps, too calm when his life is threatened, too ready to dabble in magic and blood — no offense.”

“He was an officer in the Reclamation War,” said Flora. “He’s seen his share of death.”

“What, really?” asked Perry. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Most men like him spend some time at a university or something, then go straight into business.”

“There are no men like Cormorant Wesley,” said Flora. “He was interested in the burgeoning technologies of the time, and there was nowhere with better access to them, telegraphy and moving machines. He cut his teeth there, made a name for himself in the army, then came home and got a grant from the king to pursue the construction of new factories. From that point, it's been a never-ending stream of inventions and innovations.”

“If he’s still alive, he’ll be dangerous,” said Perry.

“Dangerous for you, or for the Custom?” asked Flora.

“He drained a footman of his blood,” said Perry. “He saw what was required to make the rubies and leapt ahead without hesitation. He stood before a crowd and said with a straight face that this was the clean energy that would forge the future. If he teams up with Cosme again, if they reunite … I don’t really know why he came out of his house with the lightning gloves. Naively, it was to defend an ally and a friend, but it might have been more calculated. I’m having March listen for more radio transmissions, but I doubt they’ll do that again. It’s been silent.”

“How long will you wait?” asked Flora. “Are you waiting?”

“I have to wait,” said Perry. “There’s nothing for it, not unless they stick their heads up. If it’s Wesley, I’ll go to him and hope he leads to Cosme. If it’s Cosme, I’ll go to him and … maybe attack, maybe hold back, depending on if I have your support again. Together, we can beat him. If I’m by myself, I’m more doubtful.”

“The Jade Council is at my throat,” said Flora. “The only reason that I haven’t been stripped of my position is that they’re also at each other’s throats. Moves are being made somewhere, but it was safer for everyone when they were being made in council meetings.”

“There’s a chance that it might spill out onto the streets?” asked Perry.

“There’s a chance that it’s already spilled out onto the streets,” said Flora. “We come after a crime has been committed, in most cases.”

“I’m sorry,” said Perry.

“You didn’t cause the Century of Progress,” said Flora. “You didn’t break the Custom. At Wesley’s house — seeing the blood there, the laboratory, I became certain that Cosme alone would have been enough to sink us. The varcoli drink blood. How long would they last with blood being drained from every body before it gets to the morgue? When blood is as precious as ambergris? The scrutiny alone would uncloak them, and our operations.”

“Thank you for understanding,” said Perry. He let out a breath. Her opinion meant something to him, and not just because he was, for the moment, dependent upon her.

“I want you gone from this world,” said Flora. “You want to be gone too. But if you leave now, if you could resolve the battle with Cosme tonight, my world would be sunk, the moment of instability blowing out into ruin, one way or another. So.” She drew herself up. “I want your help. I’m pleading for it." There was real vulnerability in her eyes, the first time he'd seen it there. "I’ll help you with him, with Cosme, fight by your side, so long as you fight by mine.”

“Ah,” said Perry. He wondered when she’d had this notion, and how much of their conversation had been leading up to this point. “Deal. I owe you.”

“For now, hold tight,” said Flora. “I can bring you more papers, if you’d like to read — but you have your million books, your ‘movies’, thousands of songs. I suppose you never get bored.”

“I wish that were true,” said Perry. “I’ll be working on this.” He tapped the notebook. “And I’ll be listening for radio signals, if anyone is foolish enough to use one. And ... I need books, from here, just for long enough to look through them. Whatever you have, histories, or the practice of magic, something from one of your scholars.”

“I can try." She folded her hands, layering her slender fingers on top of one another. "I may call on you soon,” said Flora. “To hold the city together, to quash the upstarts, to preserve the Custom.”

“I’ll be ready,” said Perry.