And If Thou Wilt, Forget

“I can’t promise there will be a lot,” Tim cautioned. His ring hung loose on his finger, but he knew he still needed to hurry this up. He wouldn’t have long. “It’s not like there’s going to be a detailed notebook or a collection of fingerprints or anything. At best we might have an evil monologue or something.”

“Look, mate, you bring me the goods, I’ll do my bit.” The man was keeping his voice down, but he was practically salivating with anticipation. “You’d be amazed what I can do with little bits. And there’s a lot of us down at the station been waiting to take a good run at this. Gives us the willies, he does. There’s talk he’s holding a former cop hostage in that ivory fortress there. Hopper even swears he’s blackmailing fucking Wolf Eyes Tonner into walking on a lead.”

“Hopper’s right,” Tim said simply.

The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He nodded and repeated, “You bring me the goods, I’ll do my bit.”

“Deal. Bring it to the station?”

“I take my meal break this time every day. Most of the time we go to Cleary’s. Bring it to me there.”

Tim nodded. “Right. Until tomorrow, then.” Without further pleasantries, he turned and hurried away down the street.

The past twenty-four hours—actually thirty hours, twenty-seven minutes, but who was counting?—had been a bit more hectic than Tim would normally have preferred. They’d all listened to what Tim had to say and agreed he was right: they had to stop the Unknowing, they had to stop Elias Bouchard, and Tim’s plan would neatly handle both of those problems. Basira had given him a couple names to follow up with, and he’d made contact with a man with few scruples and fewer fucks to give who was willing to do what was required of him. Melanie had managed to scrounge up a copy of the House of Wax’s original architectural blueprints, and while Tim warned them that they weren’t likely to be accurate anymore, it at least gave them something to start with, and they’d printed the plans out, laid them out on a table, and discussed their approach. Tonner had announced her intent to “acquire” a van to get them up to Great Yarmouth—they certainly couldn’t take the explosives on the train—and Jon had, hesitantly, agreed.

Martin kept glancing at Tim every so often, but he never said a word. He didn’t need to. Tim didn’t need any kind of supernatural assistance to know he was afraid of having to stay behind, afraid that Jon would change his mind—or that Tim would—and insist he stay back instead. Certainly the Institute side of the plan would be safer than the part going on at the House of Wax. At least as Tim had laid it out for them. As much as Martin wanted Jon to be safe, so too did Jon want Martin safe, and there was little he wouldn’t do to keep him that way. Add in Tim’s innate pathological, dare he say supernatural, need to protect Jon, and it would certainly make sense for him to go.

Tim would be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about it all night as he stood behind Jon, watching him suffer through his nightmares. God knew Jon needed looking after. Tim couldn’t trust him to stay out of trouble if he did get near the Unknowing, and he also couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t let his curiosity overcome his reason. On the other hand, Martin being along would likely help with that. Jon would risk a lot of things for the sake of knowledge, but Martin’s life was almost certainly not one of them.

His phone buzzed as he made his way down the street back towards the Institute, and when he paused at the corner, he pulled it out to check. There was a text from Jon: [Elias wants to see us in his office. Says it’s important. How far away are you?]

Tim hesitated. If Elias wanted to see them, it was because he knew what they were planning and was going to give them some new and startling information under the guise of “helping”. He didn’t doubt for a moment that it would only serve to obfuscate, or worse, to sow the seeds of dissent in the ranks. There would be nothing useful to be gained and everything to lose. He wasn’t sure he could stand there and listen to Jonah Magnus play his stupid little goddamned mind games without exploding, punching him in the face, getting himself killed, or—worst of all—giving everything away.

Quickly, he texted back, [Too far for a reasonable delay. You can tell me what he says once you’re done.]

There was a long pause before Jon responded. [If you get back before we do, would you please go down to the tunnels and put your thoughts on tape?]

[Sure thing, Boss.] Tim pocketed his phone and continued, a bit more slowly, towards the Institute.

He didn’t actually need the Eye’s help to figure out that the reason for the delay had been that Jon had been agonizing over whether to use the word final before the word thought, but he supposed it was nice to have the confirmation.

It was a warm day—warmer than the previous—and a humid one; Tim wouldn’t be surprised if it rained before nightfall. He wasn’t sure if he hoped it rained the next day or hoped it didn’t. Certainly things didn’t burn as well in the rain…necessarily…which might affect the plan. On the other hand, the coffin that Breekon and Hope hauled around with them, like Gene Kelly and the Minstrel of Cranberry Lane, sang in the rain, which could only help both to keep their movements hidden and ensure they weren’t attacked without warning. Anyway, it wasn’t like they needed anything to burn continually; just the explosion would do. As Tonner had put it, rather abruptly, it just had to work, it didn’t need to be fancy.

Tim let himself into the Archives, not at all surprised to find it was deserted and empty. Martin’s tea, Melanie’s laptop, Basira’s book with the scrap of paper that hadn’t moved since Friday—all were as they should be, but there was no other living soul in the room. Tim nodded. Exactly right.

He took a moment while he was alone to grab a stack of files he’d secreted away a while ago, which he tucked into his bag. Then he grabbed the recorder off Basira’s desk, glanced at it to make sure there was a tape in there, and slid down into the tunnels.

It didn’t make a lot of sense for him to do this down here; Jonah would have his full focus on Jon and the others in his office, and there weren’t any other agents of the Ceaseless Watcher, as far as he knew, who were interested in him at the moment. But Jon had specified the tunnels, and it had to be admitted that if he was still recording when whatever was going on upstairs finished, Jonah might well turn his attention to Tim. Best not to risk it. He slipped into the war room, now cleared out, and settled down on a box, then clicked on the recorder.

“Hope you don’t mind me not making this a formal statement, but I really don’t want to invite that into my life right now,” he said with a small sigh. “Right. It’s the sixteenth of May, 2017, sixteen minutes to five PM, and tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow is the Unknowing. Jon’s asked us all to get our thoughts out on the matter, so I am…obliging. For the record, I don’t think this is a great idea. Not the plan to stop the Unknowing, but recording these statements. Uh, you never know who’s listening, and if something goes wrong you’d hate it to be because you said the wrong thing ahead of time and let the wrong person in on the secret. So, no, not going to be talking about what that plan is, thanks. Don’t want to spoil the surprise, after all.

“I’m a bit surprised, actually, that Elias is talking to everyone tonight. Would have thought he’d want to leave it as late as possible, so nobody has a chance to pick apart what he’s telling them and figure out all the holes and inconsistencies and outright deceptions. Because make no mistake—whatever he’s telling them up there, it’s utter bullshit. He doesn’t want to help. He’s got some agenda or other, and he’s going to manipulate the conversation to get the outcome he wants. Be very, very careful of whatever he’s telling you, guys, because half of it is reverse psychology and the other half is to make you think it’s reverse psychology. It’s like Vizzini facing down the Dread Pirate Roberts. You can try and work out which glass is safe to drink out of, but chances are he’s spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder and the only safe option is to knock both drinks over.”

He was silent for a couple of seconds, then went on. “We will succeed. I know the Ceaseless Watcher can’t see the future, but I know, with absolute certainty, that the Unknowing will be brought down and fail before the Stranger can come into the world. My biggest…fear, I guess…is that it takes the others down with it, but honestly? Chances are pretty low. Tonner knows what she’s doing. Basira will follow Tonner’s lead and get out of there before it gets bad. Martin might be the sort of guy to prod plastic explosives, but he’s not stupid, and Jon…okay. Jon might be too curious for his own good. Depending on how far into the Archivist he’s fallen, he might want to…See, you know? To really witness the Unknowing.

“I think maybe at a certain degree of power, someone aligned with the Eye actively watching it might be enough to disrupt it, but he’s not at that level yet, not even close. So there’s a part of me that thinks, maybe I should go, you know? Maybe I should be there to drag his stubborn arse out of there before he gets it blown up, or worse. But…well, that’s why I’m sending Martin. Why I’m going to tell him to stick close to Jon, to follow his lead, to not let him go anywhere alone. I think Martin might be the one thing Jon wouldn’t consider worth sacrificing. Which means he won’t risk Martin’s life for the sake of knowledge, which means he’ll keep himself safe by virtue of keeping Martin safe.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a bit of a risk, and I probably ought to feel guilty about the fact that I’m willing to gamble Martin’s safety for Jon’s, but my job is to protect the Archivist and I’ve still got another day or two before I can afford to be sentimental about it. And I need to be here. My part in this half of the plan is…essential, and I can’t delegate it to anyone else. And hey, it’ll be worth it to be rid of Elias Doucheard. Won’t that be nice.”

He clicked off the tape recorder and set it aside, then laced his fingers together, turned his palms outward, and stretched his arms over his head. As he did so, his metaphorical ears pricked up, and he turned his head towards the door a split second before Jon came through, looking a bit shell-shocked but determined. He got to his feet. “Hey, Boss. How’d it go?”

“I’m…not altogether certain,” Jon admitted. He pulled a second tape recorder out of his pocket and held it out to Tim. “Here. I recorded it, at Elias’s insistence…not that I wouldn’t have anyway. I’ve, I’ve rather got accustomed to recording everything lately. Like I told Martin when Prentiss attacked, I refuse to be just another goddamned mystery.”

Tim rather suspected Jon didn’t have a choice in the matter, actually, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he took it and rewound the tape, nodding at the recorder next to him. “I did like you said and recorded my thoughts, if you want to give them a listen now.”

Jon looked at the recorder for a long moment, then shook his head, more or less as Tim had expected. “No, it’s…it’s a just in case sort of thing. It can wait.”

“Fair enough. Do you want to be here for this? Not sure if you need to hear it a second time.”

“I—I might have missed something the first time.”

“Not bloody likely in this lifetime.” Nevertheless, Tim pressed PLAY.

Elias’s oily voice oozed from the speaker. “Thank you all for coming.”

Tim listened impassively as Elias baited the team with the implication that he knew what their plan was and Martin, all innocence and confusion, fell headlong into it and gave him the details…not that Tim wasn’t fairly certain Jonah already knew, but still. Tonner repeated her line about it not needing to be fancy, at which point Elias suggested they might benefit from…additional information. He mentioned having taken Gertrude’s tapes into his safekeeping when Jon had been on the run; Tim was just wondering how he was going to explain that, after Jon’s muttered aside, when he continued, “There is one I kept separate that, I feel, may be wise for you to hear. All of you. May I?”

He must have had it set aside somewhere, Tim thought as the rest of the voices on the tape mumbled agreement, but he gave nothing away. There was another click, and Tim’s heart lurched slightly as Gertrude’s voice came through with the slight diminishing of quality that came when you were listening to a recording of a recording. “Case 7870211—Abraham Janssen. Incident occurred in the Court Theater, Buda, October 1787. Statement taken from journal entry dated second November of that year. Committed to tape first November, 2013. Gertrude Robinson recording.”

The statement Tim knew well—the one he had investigated himself, the one that had impressed Gertrude enough to have her send him to the Night Market. Hearing her read it out loud gave it a new dimension that even reading it to himself hadn’t produced, and of course he knew more now than he had the last time he’d laid eyes on it. He recognized the Stranger, the Slaughter, the gorilla skin and the dance. He saw why Gertrude had been so concerned about the bird he’d retrieved for her and why she had been so concerned about how much he had been able to learn about the statement. And a small part of him mourned that the man who had written this entry had died, alone and broken and largely unbelieved, just a few short weeks later.

“Final comments,” Gertrude said at last, her voice shifting from its sonorous, almost soporific tones to her more usual brusque, businesslike attitude. “The Stranger and its ritual have proved remarkably hardy in many ways, resistant to most of the standard interferences and flexible in such a way that, while the Unknowing is relatively easy to delay, full disruption seems borderline impossible. And yet here we see what I assume to be an avatar of The Slaughter end an almost fully realized ritual with, if not ease, then at the very least a direct simplicity.

“Perhaps…that’s it? Could it be that the closer the Stranger comes to emerging, the more damaging a physical disruption to its focus becomes? More research is needed, but if that’s true, then the task becomes at once less complicated and significantly harder. Disrupting the others has been successful largely because I was able to do so before they had reached any kind of culmination, and from the description of Abraham Jenssen, I would not be confident enough in my senses to attempt something similar once the Unknowing has begun in earnest. And there is no doubt about it, what is described here is nothing more than the truth, as there was a single report from a single ‘patron’ who survived long enough to tell his tale to a nurse, who may not have believed him but did list out his apparent delusions in an official record—a man whose injuries were consistent with cannon fire. If Tim returns intact from his…current errand, I may need to have him do the research for me here. Certainly he has resources beyond even me, and if he can open doors for us, so much the better. Actually, I may need to give him a raise.”

Tim managed a small smile. She’d let him keep the money she had set aside for the bird, as well as the ring, which was just as good. He listened to the end of her summing up, then to the brief conversation that followed—confirming that it would be unlikely to be identical, that they wouldn’t be able to trust their senses, and that it wasn’t going to be easy. He was pretty sure Jon overplayed his hand, or very nearly, by suggesting that Melanie remain behind, even if they did get in a very convincing argument about it before Elias lent his support and Melanie, quite grumpily, conceded. Elias subsequently dismissed them…or began to.

“Oh, and Jon, technically I can’t stop you, but I would advise against you bringing any…rogue elements.”

“You can just say Tim.” Martin’s voice on the tape was a hair waspish.

Jon’s, on the other hand, was one of forced and studied calm. “I will take that under advisement.”

“Hmm.” Elias didn’t sound particularly convinced, which was fair. “Anyway, don’t worry about staying in contact; I’ll know when it starts.”

Tim rolled his eyes, and then rolled them even harder when he told them to keep their receipts for expenses before leaving the room. There followed a hushed, hurried conversation about whether or not he’d bought it before Martin, surprisingly, reassured everyone and ushered them along, and the tape clicked off.

Tim handed it back to Jon and raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Jon looked up at him. Tim was fairly certain he hadn’t realized the RECORD button had depressed on the device in his hand. “He doesn’t want you there.”

“He’s right,” Tim said.

From the look on Jon’s face, he hadn’t expected that. “What?”

“What, you thought I was kidding the other day when I said Melanie and I would stay back? I meant it.”

“I…I had expected you’d, you’d want to come.” Jon swallowed hard. “Actually, I had hoped you would convince Martin to stay.”

Tim swallowed back the twinge of guilt. “My plan wouldn’t work if Martin stayed. Look, I know where Elias is keeping the tapes. Martin doesn’t. I know where all the cameras are in the Institute and how to avoid them. Martin doesn’t. Neither does Melanie, and I don’t trust her not to try and knife him in the kidneys while she’s at it and ruin the whole thing. She’s got to be the bait, and I’ve got to be the one to do what needs to be done. Either Martin goes with you, or the Chief Rabbit must go alone.”

“Tunnel of water indeed,” Jon murmured. He took a deep breath. “I—I suppose I’ll feel better if I know he’s where I can see him. If I know he’s safe. I just…please be honest with me, Tim. How dangerous is this going to be?”

“The Eye can’t Know the future, Jon,” Tim reminded him gently. “But I honestly think Elias Bouchard is more likely to hurt Martin if you’re not here to protect him than the Unknowing will if he’s with you. You two will look out for each other. And Tonner will be there, too, so if it all goes to shit you can point her at the stage and let her go while the rest of you escape.”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” Tim interrupted. “And you will. You are the Archivist and you have a responsibility to your team, and that involves your survival. Tonner isn’t part of the Archives proper, so if you absolutely have to sacrifice someone, you won’t face any consequences—from the Ceaseless Watcher, at least—for letting it be her. Obviously we don’t want that to happen, but just keep in mind that not only do you not need to get yourself killed for her, you shouldn’t.”

Jon pressed his lips together tightly, then nodded. “I—I can’t help but think about all the ways this could go wrong. Suppose I’m mistaken? Suppose I get it wrong? What if—”

“You’re overthinking this. Stop borrowing trouble. As Fiver said, ‘You’re trying to eat grass that isn’t there. Why not give it time to grow?’” Tim reached over and squeezed Jon’s shoulder gently, then gave him an encouraging smile. “Go home, Jon. Get some rest. Long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

He didn’t say anything else, but from the look on Jon’s face, they were sharing the same thought: Maybe the last any of us will ever see.