The Last Magician Read online

She was probably already outside, halfway back to their apartment—his apartment, he corrected. She’d be fine, he told himself. If the tables were turned, she would probably do the same. She’d improvise, wouldn’t she? She was good at that.

  “Fine,” he told Jack, looking back at the door one last time. “Let’s go.”

  They walked a block west, avoiding the noise coming from Sixth Avenue, where some of the Haymarket’s customers and waiter girls had tried to avoid the police but ran right into them instead. If Esta had gone that way—

  If she went that way, she can get out of it. Whatever magic it was that allowed her to move like lightning, disappearing and reappearing in barely a blink, she’d be fine. He needed to stay with Jack. They were too close to let him off the hook now.

  The cab they found smelled like someone had been sick in it earlier, but Jack didn’t give any indication that he noticed. Instead, he slouched back in his seat with his eyes half-closed as the carriage started off.

  After a while, though, it became clear that Jack wasn’t taking them toward the mansions on Fifth Avenue, as Harte had expected.  When he saw the spires of Trinity Church, a landmark well below the safety of Canal Street, he started to worry.

  “Where are we going?” Harte asked as the carriage rattled on.

  Jack opened his eyes enough to squint at him. “You’ll see,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. Then he closed his eyes again and, a few seconds later, let out a soft snore.

  As they rode, Jack dozed drunkenly while Harte considered his options. But the carriage never stopped as it followed a route that cut deeper and deeper into the poorly lit neighborhood streets, each progressively darker and quieter than the last.

  When they approached the eastern edge of the island, Jack snorted and came awake with a jerk. When he saw where they were, he looked excited, anxious, and suddenly more sober than he had all night. But as they followed the shoreline, the closer they came to the towering span of the bridge, and the more uneasy Harte became.

  He couldn’t cross that bridge, but he also couldn’t stop the carriage without risking all the work he’d done to get Jack this comfortable. More important, Harte couldn’t let Jack realize the real reason he couldn’t cross the bridge.

  Every block they passed brought the bridge closer still. Harte glanced at Jack’s wrist, noticing the sliver of exposed skin between his cuff and his gloves. He’d wait until they turned toward the bridge, just to be sure. Until the danger of the Brink was worth the risk—

  But then Jack rapped on the driver’s window, and the carriage came to a shuddering stop. “We’re here,” he said, excitement and anticipation shining in his eyes despite the effects of the champagne.

  Harte took a breath, relieved that the carriage had finally stopped, but he didn’t let his guard down.

  The docks that bordered the river in that part of town were a forest of ships’ masts and a maze of warehouses crouched close to the ground. Harte wasn’t familiar with the area. The river’s edge was the domain of the longshoremen and the river rats who raided the cargo. Most people were smart enough to stay away from the docks, where the roughnecks often looked away if a body was dumped into the river.  And most Mageus would have never chanced coming that close to the Brink that silently circled the island somewhere just offshore. Even now, even with the water still some distance away, Harte could swear that he felt the chill of it.

  Jack gave the driver orders to wait and then led them through the uneven grid of buildings bathed in moonlight, swinging his arms at his sides and whistling the occasional off-key tune like they were walking through Central Park and not one of the dodgiest parts of the city. Harte never had trusted that sort of blind confidence. Usually, it was a mask for ignorance, and in his experience, both were dangerous.

  Everywhere, shadows lurked, rustling in doorways and curling against the walls of the buildings. Occasionally, one of the shadows would bring fire to its fingertips. A flicker of flame would come to life, the puff of smoke enwreathing a briefly illuminated face, and then the night would go dark again.

  It isn’t magic, Harte reminded himself. Just a simple flare of a match, the mundane glow from the flickering tip of a cigarette.

  This close to the river, Harte could almost detect the scent of the water. On the other side lay everything he’d never been able to reach, an entire land that was more than the stinking streets and the day-after-day scrambling urgency of the city.  A world where he could be something more than a rat in a trap.

  But in the next breath, the scent of water was covered by the heaviness of axle grease and soot, the ripeness of days-old fish and oyster shells. A reminder that he still had a long way to go before he could be making plans about a different future.

  Finally, they came to a long, unremarkable warehouse.  Jack took a ring of keys from his coat and made quick work of the heavy padlocks on the wooden door. But before the last one clicked open, he turned to Harte. “You probably wouldn’t even need a key, would you?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. Jack’s face was covered by shadows, but his body had gone rigid, like he’d finally sobered up enough to comprehend what he was doing. To have second thoughts.

  “I’m not a thief, Jack.”

  “I know that.” Jack shifted uneasily. “But I’m taking a risk in showing you this. I think you’ll understand, and I’m going to trust it’ll interest you enough that I won’t have to worry.”

  “Whether I’m interested or not, you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t want any trouble.”

  Jack frowned like he was puzzling over something. For a second Harte thought Jack would change his mind, so he pulled on a look of boredom and moderate impatience. “Look, I didn’t ask you to bring me here, but can we get on with it already? I need to get back and check on Esta, so if we’re not going in—”

  “No,” Jack said, giving himself a visible shake. “You’ve come all this way, you should see it. I want you to.”  He pushed the door inward. Beyond it, blank darkness waited, but Jack quickly lit a kerosene lamp near the door. “After you,” he said.

  In the center of the room, there was a large misshapen object covered by a cloth. With a smile lighting his face as much as the lamp, Jack drew the heavy tarp off and revealed something that could have been pulled from the pages of Jules Verne. The machine clearly wasn’t complete yet, but Harte could make out the gist of it: a large central globe made from what looked like glass, which was surrounded by three concentrically ringed arms that glinted in the light.

  It looked harmless enough, quiet and still as it was, but there was something about the machine that made Harte nervous.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Jack said, giving one of the great orbiting arms a push, which made all the others glide slowly through their separate rotations as well.

  “What the hell is it?” Harte asked, trying to shake the sense of apprehension he had standing next to it.

  “This is the future, Darrigan,” Jack said, beaming.

  “The future?” Harte eyed him doubtfully.

  “Come here and take a look.” Jack walked past Harte to a long worktable on the left side of the room. Various blueprints and maps were laid out in haphazard piles, anchored in place by drafting tools and angles. He motioned for Harte to join him.

  Reluctant to get too close to the strange machine, Harte made his way around the outer edge of the room, to the table where Jack was standing. At the far end of it was a model, a small rectangular building with a single tower growing from its center. The tower was capped with an odd, onion-shaped roof that reminded Harte of a picture he’d seen once of a Russian church.

  “What is all this?” Harte asked.

  Jack pointed to the model of the building. “My uncle’s building a larger version of this out on Long Island. It’s going to be a wireless transmitter—Tesla’s doing the design. When it’s done, it will transmit telegraphs, maybe even pictures, through the air. My uncle believes it’s going to revolutionize the world of bus
iness.”

  “You don’t think it will?” Harte asked, responding to the tone in Jack’s words.

  “I think he’s thinking too small and missing the point entirely,” Jack said as he began shuffling through a pile of papers. “Here, look.”

  Jack smoothed out one of the crumpled sheets for Harte to inspect.

  “It’s the Philosopher’s Hand,” he said, glancing up at Jack before returning his focus to the paper. The image was familiar to Harte—he’d studied enough alchemy to recognize the symbol and knew what it stood for.

  “Exactly. I knew you’d understand,” Jack said, excitement lighting his eyes. “Five fingers for five distinct elements, the basis of all we know and understand about otherworldly power. Everyone who studies the occult arts knows that the elements are the key to unlocking the secrets of magic. If you isolate the individual elements, you can harness their energy and command them to bend to your will. But look what holds them together.”

  The image depicted a hand with its fingers spread wide, each tipped with a different symbol—a key, a crown, a lantern, a star, and the moon. In the open palm, the fish and the flame, the symbols for . . .

  “Mercury,” Harte said, tapping the center of the palm. “The element that transcends all others. Sometimes known as quicksilver.”

  “Or Aether,” Jack added. “The same substance the baron was able to isolate, if you’re right.”

  “What’s your point, Jack?” Harte asked, unease crawling down his spine. Perhaps he’d played his game a little too well: Jack had not only taken the hook, he now seemed to be dragging him out to sea. “And what does this have to do with that machine? Or with the future?”

  “Everything.” Jack stopped short. “It has everything to do with the future. Every day, the world sends more and more of its filth to our shores. Among them, Mageus sneak into our city. Filthy. Uncivilized. Dangerous. Their very existence threatens our civilization and, as we’ve seen for ourselves, the safety of our property and our citizens. But this machine will change everything, Darrigan.” He ran his finger over the tip of the tower’s roofline. “It will put a stop to that threat once and for all.”

  “The Brink already keeps the Mageus in their place.”

  “Maybe that was true during a simpler time,” Jack said. “When the Brink was created, there were far fewer coming here. It was enough to simply trap them on the island. But the numbers have been steadily increasing. There have been attempts to meet the growing threat, of course. Ellis Island, for instance, was supposed to keep Mageus from ever setting foot on our shores, but those measures haven’t been enough. Devious as they are, more maggots slip through the inspectors every day. There are even reports that some have made it off the island and onto the mainland. That cannot stand. The Order knows something has to be done. They’ve been working on a plan to increase the Brink’s reach, but what they’re doing won’t work.”

  “No?” Harte kept his eyes trained on the model of the building, feigning interest to cover his fear.

  “Not as long as they’re using old-fashioned ideas—old-fashioned magic—instead of modern science. And so long as they’re thinking too small.”

  “The Brink is small?” Harte asked, trying to keep his voice even.

  Grew nodded. “But my machine won’t be. Consider this, Darrigan. Tesla’s tower will revolutionize wireless transmission, true, but it’s only the beginning of what could be done with it. With the kind of power this receiver can generate, it could make the Brink obsolete.” He smoothed out the rumpled paper bearing the Philosopher’s Hand again. “The Brink was created more than a century ago by a ritual manipulation of the elements through the Aether. It’s old-fashioned alchemy: Five artifacts, each imbued with the power of one of the basic elements, were used to complete the ritual. Like this hand—all the elements are connected through the Aether, the palm. It creates a circuit of sorts. When a Mageus passes through it, their power unbalances that circuit, and whatever magic they possess is drawn toward the elemental energies of the Brink as it attempts to balance itself.

  “The whole system is self-perpetuating, powered by the very feral magic it takes, which is why it’s lasted for so long with very little maintenance. But the Aether is the key,” Jack said eagerly. “There are two problems with the Brink, though. First, the power taken from any Mageus who tries to cross the Brink becomes part of the circuit, but we can’t do anything more with that power. For all intents and purposes, it’s lost. We can’t use it.” Jack eyed him. “That’s a waste, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Harte forced out, his stomach turning. “Quite.”

  “This machine would put an end to that. Instead of redistributing the power it harvests, it collects it and holds it separately.”

  “And the other problem?”

  “The Brink is limited by its size. When it was first created, no one knew how quickly the city would grow or that the wilds of Brooklyn and beyond would become what they have. No one could have imagined how many people would come to our shores. No one imagined that they would come despite the Brink.”

  “Desperate people will do desperate things,” Harte murmured. They would chance the Brink and commit themselves to living in a rattrap of a city because it was still better than the places they came from, places still ravaged by the hate spurred on during the Disenchantment. Because the hope for a different future was that powerful.

  “It’s not desperation, Darrigan. It’s a complete disregard for our way of life.  The Order is aware of this problem, of course. They were hoping to unveil their grand plan at the upcoming Conclave, when the entire Order gathers, but it isn’t working. The original artifacts aren’t powerful enough to expand the size of the Brink without making it unstable. Now they’re trying to replicate the original creation of the Brink, all in the hope that perhaps they might be able to re-create it in other places, trap any Mageus that manage to avoid New York. That hasn’t worked either.” He shook his head, a mocking expression on his face. “But will the Inner Circle listen to me?”

  “No?” Harte asked, trying to hide his hopefulness.

  “Of course not. They’re stuck in the past, and its weight is dragging them under. It will drag us all under.”  With a violent motion, Jack swept the papers off the table, causing them to flutter into the air and then settle onto the ground at Harte’s feet. “They’re so focused on containing the maggots, they don’t realize it has never worked. They’re like rats, the way their numbers seem to be growing. Like rats, they need to be exterminated, and when I get my machine working, that’s exactly what we’ll do.” He walked over to it and ran his hand over the shining metal of one of the orbital arms. “Once this machine is installed in Tesla’s single tower, it will have enough energy to clean a one-hundred-mile radius of any feral magic. Much more efficient than the old rituals. Imagine one of these in every major city. It would send a message—a warning—to any who would come to this country and try to turn us from our destiny.”

  “One hundred miles?” Harte asked, feeling almost faint. “You’re sure?”

  “The last time we tested it, the field it generated reached as far as Fulton Street, and that was only at a fraction of its capacity.” Jack smiled slyly.

  “Quite impressive,” Harte said, but he thought of  Tilly as he said it and felt sick. He hadn’t realized what Jack capable of. He’d been goading him on, encouraging him, when he should have been paying more attention.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Jack agreed. “When I multiply what this machine is capable of by the power of Tesla’s transmitter, we can easily wipe out all the feral magic in Manhattan, maybe even reach as far as Philadelphia and Boston. But unlike the Brink, the power this machine will generate once it’s installed in Tesla’s tower would be usable. Imagine it—feral magic eradicated, transformed into civilized power that could be used to guide and shape the future of this new century. Or . . . it could become a weapon unlike any the world has ever seen. This country could become even greater
than the empires of Europe after the Disenchantment.”

  Harte didn’t have any idea how to respond without giving away his true feelings. He hadn’t realized that the Brink kept the power it took from Mageus, but to increase that danger?

  If  Jack succeeded, if the Order ever controlled such a machine, magic would be doomed everywhere, as would every single person with an affinity. If  Jack was right about the machine’s possibilities, Harte’s plan to leave the city was pointless. If he didn’t find a way to stop Jack, to destroy the machine, there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide.

  “You said the machine doesn’t work?” he asked.

  “No.” Jack scraped his hand through his hair, frustrated. “Not yet, at least. I haven’t found a way to stabilize the power that it collects. There’s something about feral magic that isn’t stable. The last one I built didn’t last a week before it blew up and killed my machinist.” His eyes were a little wild as they searched the silent metal, as though it would whisper its secrets if he waited long enough. “All the power it generated was lost.”

  Just like Tilly. The existence of the machine explained the strange boundary on Fulton Street, but if Tilly had died when the machine exploded . . . what did that mean about Dolph’s plan to destroy the Brink?

  “It’s not the machine,” Jack continued, not noticing Harte’s dismay. “The design is flawless—I did it myself. The mechanism works perfectly when it’s in motion. But after meeting your Miss Filosik, I’ve realized what I’m missing.”

  “You have?” Harte asked, not liking the sound of that one bit.

  “It’s the Aether I’ve been forgetting about.”

  “The Aether?” He could barely make himself say the word.

  “Yes, of course! I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.” Jack ran a trembling hand through his hair again, making himself look even more disheveled and unhinged. “Without isolating the Aether, the power would be unstable, unpredictable. In the Philosopher’s Hand, Aether is what stabilizes the elements, so it might also stabilize the power this machine harvests. The problem is no one since the Last Magician has been able to isolate or produce it.”