The Grimnoir Chronicles: Hard Magic: Prologue

El Nido, California

    “Okies.” The Portuguese farmer spat on the ground, giving the evil eye to the passing automobiles weighed down with baskets, bushels, and crates. The cars just kept coming up the dusty San Joaquin Valley road like some kind of Okie wagon train. He left to make sure all his valuables were locked up and his Sears & Roebuck single-shot 12 gauge was loaded.

    The tool shed was locked and the shotgun was in his hands when the short little farmer returned to watch.

    One of the Ford Model Ts rattled to a stop in front of the farmhouse fence. The old farmer leaned on his shotgun and waited. His son would talk to the visitors. The boy spoke English. So did he, but not as well, just good enough to take the Dodge truck into Merced to buy supplies, and it wasn’t like the mangled inbred garbage dialect the Okies spoke was English anyway.

    The farmer watched the transients carefully as his son approached the automobile. They were asking for work. They were always asking for work. Ever since the dusts had blown up and cursed their stupid land, they’d all driven west in some Okie exodus until they ran out of farmland and stopped to harass the Portuguese, who had gotten here first.

    Of course they’d been here first. Like he gave a shit if these people were homeless or hungry. He’d been born in a hut on the tiny island of Terceira and had milked cows every single day of his life until his hands were leather bags so strong he could bend pipe. The San Joaquin valley had been a hole until his people had shown up, covered the place in Holsteins, and put the Mexicans to work. Now these Okies show up, build tent cities, bitch about how the government should save them, and sneak out at night to rob the Catholics. It really pissed him off.

    It always amazed him how much the Okies could fit onto an old Model T. He’d come from Terceira on a steamship, spending weeks in a steel hole between hot steam pipes. He’d owned a blanket, one pair of pants, a hat, and a pair of shoes with holes in them. He’d worked his ass off in a Portuguese town in Rhode Island, neck deep in fish guts, married a nice Portuguese girl, even if she was from the screwed up island of St. George, which everybody from Terceira knew was the ass crack of the Azores, and saved up enough money doing odd jobs to come out here to another Portuguese town and buy some scrawny Holsteins. Five cows, a bull, and twenty years of back breaking labor had turned into a hundred and twenty cows, fifty acres, a Ford tractor, a Dodge pickup, a good milk barn, and a house with six whole rooms. By Portuguese standards, he was living like a king.

    So he wasn’t going to give these Okies shit. They weren’t even Catholic. They should have to work like he did. He watched the Okie father talking to his son as his son patiently explained for the hundredth time that there wasn’t any work, and that they needed to head toward Los Banos or maybe Chowchilla, not that they were going to work anyway when they could just break into his milk barn and steal his tools to sell for rotgut moonshine again. His grandkids were poking their heads around the house, checking out the Model T, but he’d warned them enough times about the dangers of outsiders, and they stayed safely away. He wasn’t about to have his family corrupted from their good Catholic work ethic by being exposed to bums.

    Then he noticed the girl.

    She was just another scrawny Okie kid. Barely even a woman yet, so it was surprising that she hadn’t already had three kids from her brothers. But there was something strange about this one… Something he’d seen before.

    The girl glanced his way, and he knew then what had set him off. She had grey eyes.

    “Mary mother of God,” the old farmer muttered, fingering the crucifix at his neck. “Not this shit again…” His first reaction was to walk away, leave it alone. It wasn’t any of his business, and the girl would probably be dead soon enough, impaled through her guts by some random tree branch or a flying bug stuck in an artery. And he didn’t even know if the grey eyes meant the same thing to an Okie as it did to the Portuguese. For all he knew she was a normal girl who just looked funny, and she’d go have a long and stupid life in an Okie tent city popping out fifteen kids who’d also break into his milk barn and steal his tools.

    The girl was studying him, dirty hair whipping in the wind, and he could just tell…

    “Fooking shit damn,” he said in English, which was the first English any immigrant who worked with cows learned. He’d seen what happened to the grey eyes when they weren’t taught correctly, and as much as he despised Okies, he didn’t want to see one of their kids with their brains spread all over the road because they’d magically appeared in front of a speeding truck.

    Leaning the shotgun against the tractor tire, he approached the Model T. The Okie parents looked at him with mild belligerence as he approached their daughter. The old farmer stopped next to the girl’s window. There were half a dozen other kids crammed in there, but they were just regular desperate and starving Okies. This one was special.

    He lifted his hat so she could see that his eyes were the same color as hers. He tried his best English. “You… girl. Grey eyes.” She pointed at herself, curious, but didn’t speak. He nodded. “You… Jump? Travel?” She didn’t understand, and now her idiot parents were staring at him in slack jawed ignorance. The old farmer took one hand and held it out in a fist. He suddenly opened it. “Poof!” Then he raised his other hand as far away as possible, “Poof!” and made a fist.

    She smiled and nodded her head vigorously. He grinned. She was a Traveler all right.

    “You know about what she does?” the Okie father asked.

    The old farmer nodded, finding his own magic inside and poking it to wake it up. Then he was gone, and instantly he was on the other side of the Model T. He tapped the Okie mother on the arm through the open window and she shrieked. All his grandkids cheered. They loved when he did that. His son just rolled his eyes.

    The Okie father looked at the Portuguese farmer, back at his daughter, and then back to the farmer. The grey eyed girl was happy as could be that she’d found somebody just like her. The father scowled for a long time, glancing again at his strange child that had caused them so much grief, and then at all the other starving mouths he had to find a way to feed. Finally he spoke. “I’ll sell you her for twenty dollars.”

    The old farmer thought about it. He didn’t need any more people eating up his food, but his brother and sisters had all ended up dead before they had mastered Traveling, and this was the first other person like him he’d seen in twenty years, but he also hadn’t gotten where he was by getting robbed by Okies. “Make it ten.”

    The girl giggled and clapped.

 

---

 

New York City, New York

    The richest man in the world stepped into the elevator lift and looked in distaste at the gleaming silver buttons. The message had said to come alone, so he did not even have one of his usual functionaries to perform the service of requesting the correct floor. Rather than soiling his hands or a perfectly good handkerchief, he sighed, tapped into the lowest level of his Power, and pushed the button for the penthouse suite with his mind. Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, billionaire industrialist, could not tolerate filth. A man of his stature simply did not get his hands dirty.

    He had people for that.

    The steel doors closed. They were carved with golden figures of muscular workers creating the American dream through their sweat and industry under a rising sun emitting rays as straight as a Tesla cannon. He sniffed the air. The elevator car seemed clean. The hotel was considered a five-star luxury establishment, but Cornelius just knew that there were germs everywhere, disgusting, diseased, tiny plague nodules just itching to get on his skin. Cornelius understood the true nature of the man that was staying in this hotel, and he must have ridden in this very car. Cornelius shuddered as he squeezed his arms and briefcase closer to his sides, careful not to touch the walls.

    He could afford the finest Healers. In fact, he was one of the only men in the world that had an actual Mender on his personal staff, but nothing could stop the blight of a Pale Horse, and it was that foul Power that brought him here today, reduced to a mere caller. Cornelius had tried to seek out others, once under a gypsy tent on Coney Island, again in a tiny shack in the Louisiana Bayou, but those had been frauds, charlatans, wastes of his valuable time. He tapped his foot impatiently. After what seemed like an eternity, the doors whisked open.

    A tuxedoed servant was waiting for him, an older negro with stark white hair. The servant bowed his head. “Good evening, Mr. Stuyvesant. Mr. Harkeness is waiting on the balcony. May I take your coat, sir?”

    “Not necessary. My business will not take long.”

    The servant studied him with cunning eyes. “Of course, sir. Would you care for a drink? Mr. Harkeness has a selection of the finest.”

    “As if I would drink anything here,” Cornelius sputtered. The notion of ingesting something from the household of a Pale Horse was madness. “Take me to him immediately.”

    “Of course, sir.” The servant led the way down the marble hall. Carved busts of long-dead Greeks watched him from pedestals, judging. Cornelius hated statues. Statues made him prickly. Even the giant idolized bronze of himself at the new super-dirigible dock bearing his name atop the new Empire State Building bothered him.

    Lots of things made Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant uncomfortable, including this servant. He did not like the way he had examined him, like he was being sized up. The information he’d gathered on Harkeness indicated that the man surrounded himself with other like-minded Actives. There were many who would kill a Pale Horse on basic principle, so it made sense to have loyal staff with Power for security. He idly wondered what kind of Active the old servant was. Probably something barbaric, like a Brute, or even worse, a Torch. That would seem to suit a race that was so easily inflamed by their passions.

    “Mr. Harkeness is through here, sir.” The servant paused at the fine wood and thick glass door leading to the balcony. He turned the knob and opened it. “He prefers the fresh air. Will there be anything else?”

    Cornelius did not bother to respond as he stepped onto the balcony. His time was valuable, more valuable than any man in the world, more valuable than emperors, kings, tsars, kaisers, and especially that imbecile, Herbert Hoover, and the very idea that he was reduced to having to take time from his busy schedule to meet someone on their terms rather than his was blatantly offensive.

    To further the sleight, Harkeness was leaning on the balcony, overlooking the city, placing his back toward the richest man in the world, as if Manhattan were somehow more important than Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant, himself. The balcony lights had been extinguished, so as not to hamper the view. The city was illuminated forty stories below by electric lights and flashing marquees. Thousands of automobiles filled the streets, bustling even at this hour, and overhead a passing dirigible train floated in the amber spotlights like a herd of sea cows. Cornelius snorted in greeting.

    “Mr. Stuyvesant.” The Pale Horse didn’t bother to turn around. His voice was neutral, flat. “I was just admiring your marvelous city. Have a seat.”

    Cornelius felt a single drop of sweat roll down his neck. It was shameful, but he found that he was actually frightened. He glanced at the pair of chairs, fine, stuffed leather things that in any other scenario would be inviting to rest his ponderous bulk, but at that moment, all he could imagine was the horrible diseases crawling on the cushions.

    “I said have a seat,” Harkeness repeated, still not turning around. His accent was indeterminate, his pronunciation awkward. “You are a guest of mine. I would not harm a guest. I am a civilized man, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

    Cornelius sat, vowing that he would throw this suit into the fireplace as soon as he got home, then he would have his personal Healer expend a month’s worth of Power checking his health. He would probably burn the Cadillac car he had traveled in, maybe the driver too, just to be on the safe side.

    Harkeness left the railing and took the other seat. He did not offer his hand. He was older than Cornelius had expected, tall and thin, face lined with creases, and blue eyes that sparked with an unnerving energy. His hair was receding, and what remained was artificially blackened. His tailored suit was as fine as could be had, and his tie was made of silk as red as fresh blood. He smiled, and his teeth were slightly yellow in the dim city light. “Smoke?”

    Cornelius looked down at the wooden humidor on the table between them. The cigars were sorely tempting, but the very thought of touching his lips with an item tainted by Harkeness’ evil made his stomach roil. “No, thank you.”

    Harkeness nodded in understanding as he puffed on his own Cuban. “Straight to the chase then. I was informed that you were looking for me.”

    “Nobody can ever know we spoke,” Cornelius insisted. He was the founder and owner of United Blimp & Freight, the primary shareholder in Federal Steel, and the man that bankrolled the development of the Peace Ray. He’d sired children who had gone on to be ambassadors to powerful nations, senators, congressmen, and even a governor. A Stuyvesant could not be seen consorting with such sordid types.

    “I assure you, I am a man of discretion.” Harkeness exhaled a pungent tobacco cloud, not seeming to notice his guest’s discomfort.

    Cornelius cringed, trying not to inhale smoke that had actually been inside the very lungs of such a pestilent creature. “You are a hard man to find, Mr. Harkeness,” the billionaire said, aware that he had to tread carefully. Even with eight decades of mankind dealing with the presence of Powers, of actual magic, to the point that it was just an accepted part of life in most of the world, the Pale Horse was such a rarity that most still considered them to be a myth, crude anti-magic propaganda created to sow fear and distrust in the hearts of the masses. “Men of your… skills… are especially rare.”

    “Yes… What is it you were told I am?” Harkeness asked rhetorically, examining the ash on the end of his cigar.

    Cornelius hesitated, not sure if he should answer, but growing tired off the awkward silence, he finally spoke. “I was told you are a Pale Horse.”

    Harkeness laughed hard, slapping his knee. “I like that. So… biblical! So much nicer than plague bearer, or grim reaper, or angel of death. That title has gravitas. Pale Horse! You, sir, have made my day. Perhaps I shall add that to my business cards.” His pronunciation was stilted, with pauses between random words. Cornelius found it almost hypnotic, and realized he was nervously smiling along with the other man’s mirth. Then Harkeness abruptly quit laughing and his voice turned deadly serious. “So, who must die?”

    “You presume much,” Cornelius said defensively.

    “If you just wanted to merely curse someone and make their hair fall out, or to give them boils, fits, or incontinence, there are far easier Actives to reach than I.” Harkeness’ smile was unnerving. “People come to me when they desire something… epic.”

    The industrialist swallowed and placed his briefcase on the table. He unlocked it, then turned it so that Harkeness could see inside. It was filled with neatly stacked and meticulously counted bank notes and a single newspaper clipping. Cornelius quickly snatched his hand away before the Pale Horse could touch the contents, as if his Power might somehow be transmitted through the leather.

    The Pale Horse did not seem to notice the money. He gently removed the yellowed clipping, took a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket, set them atop his hawk-like nose and began reading. After a moment he removed the glasses and returned them and the clipping to his pocket. “An important man. Very well… What will it be? Bone rot? Consumption? Cancers of the brain or bowel? Syphilis? Leprosy? I can do anything from a minor vapor to turn his joints to sand while his skin boils off in a cancerous sludge. I am an encyclopedia of affliction, sir.”

    Cornelius bobbed his head in time with the litany of diseases. “All of them.”

    “I see…” Harkeness seemed to approve. “Very well, but first, I must know…”

    “Yes,” Cornelius answered hesitantly. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

    “Why? A man such as you has no shortage of killers to choose from. Why not a knife in the back? A bullet in the head? You yourself are a Mover, why not just invite him to a balcony such as this and shove him off? It would even look like a suicide, which would be particularly scandalous in the papers.”

    “How—“ Cornelius sputtered. His Power was a secret. “Me? A magical? Who told you such slanderous lies?”

    Harkeness shrugged. “I have a trained eye, Mr. Stuyvesant. Now answer my question. Why do you need me to curse this man?”

    Cornelius felt his face flush with anger. No matter how dangerous Harkeness was, Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant was not about to have his motives questioned by a mere hireling. He pushed himself away from the table and rose, bellowing, “Why you? I do not want him dead. That is far too good a fate for one such as he! I want him to suffer first. I want him to know he’s dying and I want him to pray to his ineffectual God to save him as his body rots and stinks and melts to the blackest filth. I want it to hurt and I want it to be embarrassing. I want his lungs to fill with pus. I want his balls to fall off and I want him to piss fire! I want his loved ones to look away in disgust, and I want it to take a very, very long time.”

    Harkeness nodded, his face now an emotionless mask. “I can do this thing for you, but first, I must ask, what terrible thing did this man do to deserve such a fate?”

    The billionaire paused, pudgy hands curled into fists. He lowered his voice before continuing. He had planned this revenge for years. It was only the purity of the hate for his enemy that drove him to this place. “He took something… someone… from me. Leave it at that.” Cornelius tried to calm himself. He was not a man given to such unseemly outbursts. “Will that do?”

    “It is enough.”

    Cornelius realized he was standing, but it did make him feel more in control, more in his element. He gestured at the open briefcase. “I was given your name by an associate. I believe that this is the same amount that he paid for your services.” Rockefeller had warned Cornelius about how expensive the Pale Horse would be, but it would be so very worth the money. “Take it.”

    The other man shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”

    “What!” Cornelius sputtered. Was he going to try and shake him down for more money than Rockefeller? The nerve. “How dare you!”

    Harkeness leaned back in his chair, puffing on the cigar. He took it away from his mouth and smiled without any joy. “I don’t want your money, Mr. Stuyvesant. I want something else.”

    Cornelius trembled. Of course, he’d heard the odder stories about the Pale Horses, the rarest of the Actives, but he had paid them no heed. He was a man of science, not superstition. Sure, he had magic himself, nowadays one in a hundred Americans had some small measure, but it didn’t mean he understood how it actually worked. One in a thousand had access to greater Power, being actual Actives, but men like Harkeness were something different, something rare and strange, themselves oddities in an odd bunch. Hesitantly he spoke. “Do… do you want… my soul?”

    This time Harkeness really did laugh, almost choking on his cigar. “Now that’s funny! Do I look like a spiritualist? I’m certainly not the devil, Mr. Stuyvesant. I do not even know if I believe in such preposterous things. What would I even do with your soul if I had it?”

    That was a relief, even if Cornelius wasn’t particularly sure if he had a soul, he didn’t want to deed it over to a man like Harkeness. “I don’t know,” Cornelius shrugged. “I just thought…”

    Harkeness was still chuckling. “No, nothing so mysterious. All I want is a favor.”

    That caused Cornelius to pause. “A favor?”

    Harkeness was done laughing. “Yes, a favor. Not today. But someday in the future I will call and ask for a favor. You will remember this service performed, and you will grant me that favor without hesitation or question. Is that understood?”

    “What manner of favor?”

    The Pale Horse shrugged. “I do not yet know this thing. But I do know that if you fail to honor our bargain at that particular time, I will be greatly displeased.”

    He was not, by nature, a man who intimidated easily, but Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant was truly unnerved. The threat went unsaid, but who would want to cross such a man? The industrialist almost walked out on the absurd and frightening proposal, but he had been planning his revenge for far too long to turn back now. If the favor was too large, Cornelius knew he always had other options. Harkeness was deadly, but he wasn’t immortal. It would not be the first time he had used murder to get out of an inequitable contract.

    “Very well,” Cornelius said. “You have a deal. When will he get sick?”

    Harkeness closed his eyes for a few seconds, as if pondering a difficult question. “It is already done,” the Pale Horse said, opening his eyes. “Isaiah will see you out.”

 

---

 

    Isaiah joined his employer on the balcony a few minutes later. Harkeness had gone back to admiring the view. “Could you Read him?”

    “He’s very intelligent. I had to be gentle or he would’ve known. He’s got a bad tendency to shout his thoughts when he gets riled up.” The servant leaned against the concrete wall and folded his arms. “He even thought I might be a Torch. Can you believe that?”

    Harkeness chuckled, knowing that Isaiah was far more dangerous than some mere human flame hurler. “Was he truthful?”

    “Mostly. He absolutely despises this man.”

    “For what he did to him? Wouldn’t you?”

    Isaiah sounded disgusted. “Stuyvesant is utterly ruthless.”

    So am I, Harkeness thought, knowing full well that Isaiah would pick that up as clearly as a high strength radio broadcast. “You don’t get to such lofty positions without being dangerous. I’ll have to curse him quickly. Arranging a meeting should be easy enough. Stuyvesant will be expecting immediate results now.”

    Isaiah left the wall and took one of the cigars from the table. “I liked your little show, with closing the eyes and just wishing for somebody to die and all that. That’s good theater.”

    Of course, even he had his limits. He would actually have to touch the victim, and it took constant Power thereafter to keep up the onslaught against the ministrations of Menders, which he already knew this man would have. This would be an extremely draining assignment. “Whatever keeps Stuyvesant nervous,” Harkeness shrugged. “I do like the new term though. It suits me.”

    Isaiah quoted from memory as he clipped the end from the Cuban. “And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, and I looked and beheld a pale horse, and the name that sat upon him was death…”

    “And hell followed with him,” Harkeness finished, smiling. “Appropriate…”

    “If the favor you ask of him is too difficult, he’ll have you killed.”

    Harkeness had suspected as much. “He could try. Wouldn’t be the first.”

    “The man’s got a phobia about sickness. The Spanish Flu near did him when it came through, been worrying him ever since.” Isaiah said as he lit the cigar. “He’s scared of you.”

    “Good,” the Pale Horse muttered, watching the people moving below, scuttling about like ants, ignorant little creatures, unaware of the truth of the world in which they lived. The Chairman was about to change the world, whether any of the ants liked it or not, and that meant war. Many ants would be stepped on, but that was just too bad. It was unfortunate to be born an ant. “He should be…”

 

---

 

Billings, Montana

    Every day was the same. Every prisoner in the Special Prisoner’s Wing of the Rockville State Penitentiary had the exact same schedule. You slept. You worked. You got put back in your cage. You slept. You worked. You got put back in your cage. Repeat until time served.

    Working meant breaking rocks. Normal prisoners were put on work crews to be used by mayors trying to keep budgets low. They got to go outside. The convicts in Special Wing got to break rocks in a giant stone pit. Some of them were even issued tools. The name of the facility was just a coincidence.

    One particular convict excelled at breaking rocks. He did a good job at it because he did a good job at everything he set his mind to. First he’d been good at war and now he was good at breaking rocks. It was just his nature. The convict had single-minded determination, and once he got to pushing something, he just couldn’t find it in himself to stop. He was as constant as gravity. After a year, he was the finest rock breaker and mover in the history of Rockville State Penitentiary.

    Occasionally some other convict would try to start trouble because he thought the convict was making the rest of them look bad, but even in a place dedicated to holding felons who could tap into all manner of magical affinities, most were smart enough not to cross this particular convict. After the first few left in bags, the rest understood that he just wanted to be left alone to do his time. Occasionally some new man, eager to show off his Power, would step up and challenge the convict, and they too would leave in a bag.

    The warden did not blame the convict for the violence. He understood the type of men he had under his care, and knew that the convict was just defending himself. Between helping meet the quota for the gravel quarry that padded the warden’s salary under the table, and for ridding the Special Wing of its most dangerous and troublesome men, the warden took a liking to the convict. He read the convict’s records, and came to respect the convict as a man for the deeds he’d done before committing his crime. He was the first Special Prisoner ever granted access to the extremely well-stocked, but very dusty prison library.

    So the convict’s schedule changed. Sleep. Work. Read. Sleep. Work. Read. So now the time passed faster. The convict read books by the greatest minds of the day. He read the classics. He began to question his Power. Why did his Power work the way it did? What separated him from normal men? Why could he do the things he could do? Because of its relation to his own specific gifts, he started with Newton, then Einstein, finally Bohrs and Heisenberg, and then every other mind that had pontificated on the science related to his magic. And when he had exhausted the books on science, he turned to the philosophers’ musings on the nature of magic and the mystery of where it had suddenly come from and all of its short history. He read Darwin. He read Schuman, and Kelser, Reed, and Spengler. When that was done, he read everything that was left.

    The convict began to experiment with his Power. He would sneak bits of rock back into his cell to toy with. Reaching deep inside himself, twisting, testing, always pushing with that same dogged determination that had made him the best rock breaker, and when he got tired experimenting with rocks, he started to experiment on his own body. Eventually all those hours of testing and introspection enabled him to discover things about magic that very few other people would ever understand.

    But he kept that to himself.

    Then one day the warden offered the convict a deal…