“What about McAnally’s?” Mort asked.
“There’s a market set up in the parking lot,” I said. “Mostly our people. Good place for information. But Mac wants his place peaceful and neutral. He wants in, he’ll let us know.”
Mort closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.”
I’d just been making it up as I went along. But I supposed there was no need to burden Mort with that. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll…uh, I’ll expect you to go over the risks with Fitz. But we both know he’ll want to do it. Tomorrow. Six a.m.”
“That early?”
“Might as well start the way I mean to continue,” I said.
“He’ll be here.” Mort rose to leave but paused by the door. “Harry…thank you. You do a lot that people don’t see. I know what that’s like. So thank you.”
I felt responsibility piling up on my shoulders like lead weights.
But I nodded at him and said, “Sure, Mort. You’re welcome.”
Chapter
Six
August came with furious heat that year. It did bad things to the city.
The smell of death was everywhere, even if it was fainter than it had been. It hung about at the very edges of perception, a ghost that reminded everyone of that horrible midsummer night of the battle. Trash had piled up, too. There was simply too much of it to be moved through the limited access of the streets. That smell dominated the air, along with effluvia from sewers that had been clogged by the debris of destroyed buildings.
More people had moved out of town, maybe half of them. It made the streets eerily empty. At night, no one went outside. Ghouls had been drawn to the vast stench of death, and they haunted the night even in places where they would never have dreamed of coming out before. It was to be expected at any tragedy large enough. They wiggled into ruins and ate corpses—and probably made some new ones.
Inside the castle, it wasn’t too bad. The heavy stones kept out the heat. Only some of the rooms had windows, and we kept those curtained.
“Three more minutes of push-ups,” I said to Fitz. “And keep reading.”
The kid was dressed in gym shorts and sneakers, like me, as we worked out in the castle’s upper dining hall, which had been converted into a gym. I’d had Fitz doing a lot of calisthenics when he expressed skepticism about lifting weights. I was working the heavy bag, building up the arm that had been broken and just gotten out of its cast. I wastaking the opportunity to charge up my kinetic energy rings, each of the magical tools storing back a little energy every time I threw a punch.
“I’m…sweating…on the pages…” Fitz gasped, laboring to keep his body straight and his arms pushing and contracting.
“You want to be a major-league wizard, it’s going to mean being able to concentrate even when you’re out of breath and your arms hurt,” I said, throwing steady combos at the bag. I alternated left-side and right-side combinations, shifting my feet so that the punches were coming up from my legs and hips. “You want to do every other letter of the alphabet instead?”
“I read…this one…five times…already…” Fitz complained.
“Elementary Magicis all about the fundamentals,” I said. “Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Just like professional ball. The greats are always working on their basic skills.”
I slammed several blows into the heavy bag that made it jump and rattle on its chain. I hadn’t ever punched it off the chain like Captain America, and I hadn’t ever broken a bag open, but my knuckles had lost their share of skin, even inside the wraps.
My hands didn’t hurt. The mantle of the Winter Knight saw to that.
Thinking about the people I’d lost did.
Karrin.
Susan.
Wild Bill.
Yukie Yoshimo.
I threw punches until I ran out of wind and then let my arms drop. I stood there with my head bowed, breathing hard, sweat running down me. The bag kept swinging on its chain for a good minute.
I looked up to see Fitz staring at me.
