So that’s the story of my grand adventure. I’ve certainly had other adventures, and I’d be glad to tell you about them if you’re interested, but unlike a certain chain-smoking London street wizard, I don’t save the world every other day.
So what actually happened, there at the end?
La Guardia would have been a match for either Bill the Butcher or Bill Tweed – the spirit of New York’s violence and the spirit of its corruption – but not both at the same time.
So we called in help.
Neither the Butcher nor Tweed would leave their territory to go into the other’s, even to accept a surrender. Too easy to get ambushed that way. They wouldn’t have gone to City Hall, either, the center of La Guardia’s power. They’re afraid of him, and rightfully so. Besides, neither of them was ever very comfortable in a place of legitimate government.
So we invited them to Delmonico’s, which they both thought of as neutral territory.
It’s not. It’s a stronghold for the Economancers. The oldest fine dining establishment in the United States, smack in the center of the Financial District for as long as there’s been such a thing, countless deals have been closed over dinner there over the years. That restaurant is ours. As soon as the Thief and the Thug stepped in there, they were as much in our power as I was in theirs in Tammany Hall and the Five Points…or as much as I was in La Guardia’s in City Hall, for that matter.
We let them in at an evening in the late Thirties, when La Guardia would be at his strongest. It wasn’t difficult in the Soul of The City. It didn’t even really count as time travel. The City’s memories are all in one place, just like yours are.
La Guardia held them there. And while he held them there, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan met at the Wall Street bull.
They were able to give the Good Mayor the strength to hold the Thief and the Thug, and to seal them away for good. But there was a price. In Economancy, there’s always a price. In order for it to work, in order for it to really be “for good” instead of them working their way free in a decade or two, La Guardia had to stay.
And that was a high price to pay. When I first started writing this story down, almost a year and a half ago, I didn’t know what dark times were coming, what disaster La Guardia was warning about and both Tweed and the Butcher wanted to take advantage of. Now I do. We made it through, which we might not have done if either Bill had been in control, but we had to do it alone, and we lost some pieces of ourselves along the way. But maybe that’s the only way you can make it through something like that. Economancy. You pay the price…and you make magic.