“Is that really him?” rasped a voice within the chamber. It was a heavy, Balkan accent and belonged to a man who had played a strange but instrumental role in Max’s life.
Stepping across the threshold, Max saw Peter Varga sitting on the edge of a chair and leaning forward on his cane. His black hair was now flecked with gray, but his face was less gaunt and harrowed than it had been when Max first saw him on a train in Chicago. Then, the man had been an outcast from Rowan—hunted and pursued for making unauthorized overtures to the witches and the Workshop. Having rescued Max from Marley Augur’s crypt, Varga had earned his way back into Rowan’s good graces, but it had come at a terrible price. Marley Augur’s hammer had broken his back and he’d never fully recovered. Even now, he refused a wheelchair and relied instead upon a cane to get about with ungainly, stumbling steps that invited inconsiderate stares.
Few stared for very long, however. Peter Varga’s most arresting trait was not his injury, but his eye. While one was green and unremarkable, the other was entirely white and possessed a ghostly, sentient quality that seemed to latch on and study its subjects with chilling intensity. No one lingered long under the eye’s prescient gaze, and it, combined with the man’s lurching gait and notoriety, made him a popular subject for rumor and gossip. Even after Cooper invited him to join the Red Branch, few people trusted Peter Varga and many shunned his company.
Max was among these, but his feelings had nothing to do with the man’s appearance. When it came to Peter, Max’s feelings were confused and deeply personal. Agent Varga had once protected Max and saved his life, but his prescience played a role in the disappearance and untimely death of Max’s mother. Gratitude, guilt, and anger were difficult feelings to reconcile, and Max did not try. Since his mother’s passing, he simply ignored Peter Varga and rebuffed every attempt at friendship.
But he could not ignore him now. Pushing up from his chair, Peter hobbled toward him, smiling faintly as he took Max in. He stopped several feet away, uncertain whether a handshake would be welcome. It was an awkward moment. Max thought of Byron Morrow’s letter and the sad absence of any closure or reconciliation.
“I envy your powers of recovery,” said Peter, shaking the proffered hand appreciatively. “David said your wounds were very serious. At least they were not in vain.”
The man gestured toward a large, levitating orb of runeglass in which the pinlegs was scuttling about like a hamster running on a wheel. As the orb turned, its inscriptions changed, ranging from the most basic Solomon Seal to intricate pentacles involving hundreds of tiny runes and sigils. Every so often, there was a spark and the pinlegs jumped to avoid a particular rune or section of an inscription. When this happened, enchanted quills recorded the details upon a huge roll of parchment like a sort of seismograph. Several sheets had been torn away and hung upon the far wall, where David was appraising them, studying the dense symbols and patterns like an astronomer trying to identify one particular star among the infinite heavens.
Sipping his coffee, the sorcerer spoke in a weary voice. “Did Mina charm you into bringing her? She’s been trying to sneak in.”
“No,” said Max. “But Toby’s here. He was waiting in the vestibule.”
“Toby,” chided David, his pale eyes never leaving the patterns. “What did I say?”
“You said this was top secret,” recounted Toby, uncoiling as Max set him upon a table.
“Exactly,” said David.
“But I helped you acquire the awful thing!” the smee protested. “I—I’m part of the team!”
“You are part of the team,” David assured him. “But you’re also an inveterate gambler who is willing to do or say just about anything to impress your audience. For example, did you not boast to a certain faun how your timely actions saved us above Piter’s Folly?”
“I don’t recall,” sniffed the smee.
“I do,” said David calmly. “It was three nights ago in Cloubert’s casino. You were at the roulette table and were already down four lunes and eleven coppers.”
“H-how do you know that?” sputtered Toby nervously.
“I bribed that faun to inform on you.” David shrugged. “A single lune was all it took for her to report everything you’d said throughout the evening. She didn’t even know—or care—who I was or why I wanted the information.”
A beat of mortified silence as the smee swelled up with indignation. “That was an unconscionable assault upon my privacy!”
“Very true,” David confessed. “It is also an invaluable reminder to you that we are on the threshold of war. Rowan welcomes refugees and new arrivals every day. Most are simply seeking shelter, but there are doubtless many spies and saboteurs among them—even in Cloubert’s. We cannot trust you with confidential information if you’re going to blab secrets to every faun that catches your eye at the roulette table. The stakes are too high.”
The smee drooped. “You’re right,” he sighed. “I’ve been indiscreet. I will be silent, David.”
“Very good,” said David, turning to join them. He smiled at Max, but there were deep circles beneath his eyes and he was still wearing the clothes from his visit to the healing ward. Limping toward the sphere, he stopped to peer in on the pinlegs and tap the orb with his finger. As soon as he did so, the pinlegs whipped about and attacked the very spot, its legs and pincers scrabbling madly for a hold on the enchanted glass. Venom dribbled from its mandibles, and for just an instant, Max caught faint flashes of red designs on the creature’s segmented body. When David stopped touching the sphere, the creature returned to its mindless, undulating trek.
“Did you see it?” he asked, turning to them.
“The symbols,” put in Max. “They flashed red when it attacked.”
“That’s right,” said David. “The pinlegs is trying to arm itself. Miss Boon has gotten the thing to cycle through its operation settings. There’s a whole range: dormant, stealth, even the fairly terrifying seek-and-destroy mode you’ve just witnessed. On this setting, it will attack anything that comes near it, and this is the mode we’ve been trying to study.”
“What’s the flash designed to do?” asked Max.
“It’s to summon something,” answered Miss Boon. “We believe the intermittent flash indicates that it’s not working properly. In this mode, the pinlegs is trying very hard to establish some sort of connection, but the connection is failing almost instantly. Madam Petra said this one was not ‘paired.’ We have several theories on what that might mean, but we also think some trigger component is missing from this specimen. Perhaps another symbol or inscription is required to complete the cycle and let the creature sustain the necessary elements for a proper summoning.”
“And so that’s why the runeglass is cycling through inscriptions,” said Max. “You’re trying to identify what the proper symbol is. You’re cracking a safe.”
“Trying to,” said David. “But the Workshop’s people are very smart. There’s a lot of cryptography at play, and while we’re trying to optimize the testing, it’s very slow going. Theoretically, it could take years to play out the permutations. I’m trying to accelerate things, but we’re hoping Peter has a breakthrough.”
“What David means is that we’re trying to cheat,” Varga chuckled. “I’ve been trying to concentrate on Prusias’s army and see if I can glean any information about these creatures or what they summon. I get glimpses, but they’re hazy. Little more than impressions.”
“What can you make out?” asked Max.
“Not enough,” muttered Varga, closing his eyes. “I can hear the pinlegs scuttling all around. There’s light and sound. So much sound! At first it’s like thunder, but then there are horns—they grow louder and louder. It’s hard to endure them. The earth shakes. I’m looking up, but something’s blotting out the sky. I can’t see it clearly, but it’s huge. And then darkness.” The man opened his eyes and cleared his throat. “There’s death in those visions.”
“And we’d like to avoid it,” remarked Miss Boon. “The plan is to deconstruct this thing’s operations and find a way to sabotage them if we ever encounter them on our shores. We’re not there yet, but we’re hopeful that some of Sir Alistair’s intelligence will yield another prize. He’s identified several of the Workshop engineers who worked on the pinlegs project. Only two live above ground, and Agent Kiraly’s tracked one to his estate outside Prusias’s capital. We hope to have him shortly.”
Max nodded his approval. Natasha Kiraly was also in the Red Branch, an exceedingly capable Agent whose stealth and swiftness were legendary. If the target was accessible, Max had no doubt she’d get him.
“One of my tunnels is near that location,” said David. “Agent Kiraly’s using spypaper to communicate with Ms. Richter each day. Once we confirm she has the target, we’ll give her the tunnel location and I’ll go retrieve them. With any luck, we’ll soon have a valuable prisoner.”
“But won’t the Workshop know he’s gone missing?” asked Max.
