Good thing about Wilson. He anticipated trouble. Trick he learned early on, from what little I knew of his history, a lesson that had been sharpened by the events of two years ago. He and I and Emily spent the better part of two weeks living in basements and cisterns while the Badge turned the city upside down looking for us. Now he kept little hiding spots all over the city, sometimes nothing more than a rope at the end of an alley, sometimes cached weapons and the kind of living quarters we could have used back then, tucked between buildings or suspended from little-used foot bridges. Soon as I had the stink of the Brights' rent house out of my nostrils, I turned to the closest of these hiding spots and put my head down. The crowds here were thick, but everyone was keeping to their own business. Wasn't long before he found me.
"Been following you," he said as he swung down from a shed roof, landing and matching my stride perfectly. The crowd never even noticed that there was another body among them. "And I'm not alone in that."
"You saying that I have a tail?"
"I'm saying that we're not going to lead this guy to my hiding spot, as was your clear destination." He put an arm over my shoulder, like we were old drinking buddies, smiled with his thousand teeth. "Turn here."
I turned. It was a short alley, the far end cluttered with barrels. We stopped and turned back to the alley's mouth. Wilson stood there with his arms crossed, waiting.
The guy came around the corner at a fast clip. Worried about losing us, maybe. He wore a halfcoat and shiner's cap, pulled way down over his eyes. His shoulders were hunched. Saw our feet first and stopped dead in his tracks. When he looked up I almost laughed.
"They're hiring them awful young these days," I said. The kid was baby-faced, his mouth hanging open, fat quivering around his jowls. Looked ready to piss himself. "You lose your way, son?"
"No, no sir. But. I guess. I think I took a wrong turn," he stuttered, backing towards the street. Wilson grimaced at him, and it was all the kid could do not to yelp. "Wrong."
He was back around the corner and gone with the speed of the truly terrified. Wilson and I exchanged an amused look, and went back to the street.
"We should have caught him. See what he knew," I said.
"Maybe. Just a kid, like you said. Someone hired him in a dark alley, or at a candy shop." Wilson adjusted his vest and looked up and down the street. "Anyway. He's well gone now."
"Yeah. So, you get away okay?" I asked.
"No. They caught me, branded me, scooped out my brains and then sent my reanimated dead body to hunt you down," he said, with not even a quiver of humor in his voice. "I'm going to hold you here until my masters in the Badge show up."
"Seriously," I said.
"They didn't chase me at all. And I never saw the girl again." He looked at me and shrugged. "After a while I doubled back to see what they were doing with you. Followed you here from the prison, been waiting outside that house for you to come out. You and Angela have a nice roll in the hay?"
"Don't even joke about that. You could have made yourself known earlier. You would have found that place interesting."
"No thanks," he said. "Something about Angela doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's the way she tried to kill us all, back in the day. Maybe it's the fact that she's a half-dead bitch, living in a dress made of steel and abomination. Hard to say. But it's something."
"You're such a snob," I laughed. "No wonder you don't have any friends."
"I don't have any friends because you people killed them all, or locked them in cages." He glanced at me, his odd smile lightening the comment. "Now, come on. There's something you should see."
"Is it something like that mask? Because I've seen plenty of that."
He patted his vest, and I heard the mask clang dully. "No. Not sure there's anything quite like this thing. I got bored while I was running from the Badge. Or thought I was running from the Badge. Did some looking around."
"What'd you find?" I asked.
"Oh. This is really something you should see for yourself. Gonna take some climbing."
"I've been hiding in bars and drinking myself into shape, in anticipation of just such an event," I said. "Let's go climb something tall to look at something mysterious, rather than just have you tell me what it is. Sounds great."
"Seriously, Jacob." He gave me a vaguely nervous look. "This you should see."
Like most of the Founders' Estates, the Manor Tomb sat in the middle of a district that was once quite opulent, and had since fallen to decrepitude. Those Founders who could afford to move had settled in better parts of the city. The Burns stayed because there was no money for a move. The Tombs stayed because the Patron was in the basement, and he was never going to move again.
The manor itself was ringed in a low wall, enough to keep out prying eyes and lazy thieves. Of course, no one broke into the Tomb estate, because the thieves in Veridon were superstitious. And there was nothing more superstitious than an ever-living Founder and his progeny of undead Councilors. They had the money to keep a small army on the premises, too. That army was in good array today, standing guard and patrolling and generally looking very fit to fight. Back when there had been trouble, the Manor Tomb served as something of a battleground, and their guard hadn't been up to the task. This was no longer the case.
We were observing all of this from a church spire, one of the many empty institutions of some dead religion that dotted the city. People came, brought their gods, built their temples, then fell under the sway of the Algorithm. Hard to argue with a god that made that kind of money, and produced that quantity of miracles. Wilson was perched comfortably on the side of the belltower, his foot hanging breezily over a forty-foot drop. I was clutching the railing like I wanted to kill it. I did want to kill it. I wanted to kill this entire expedition and get down to the nice, smooth ground.
"Is there some reason we're spying on the family that was just so kind as to break me out of jail, Wilson? Because we could probably knock on the door," I said through gritted teeth. "I've been formally introduced to their daughter."
"You used to be brave, you know?" Wilson gave me an amused eye and then shook his head. "You used to be all about the crazy plans."
"Brave got me nowhere," I said. Brave got Emily killed, I didn't say. "Just show me what needs showing and then let's get out of here."
"Might be a while. I swung by here, thinking I'd lose the Badge, maybe get them thinking I was hiding among the Family Tomb. I like making trouble for that girl. But then I saw something up in the tower. The window happened to be open."
I peered in the direction he indicated. One of the old solar towers of the estate was well lit, even in the midday sun. The curtains were all drawn shut, haloing the lights inside. The balcony was crowded with birdcages, their occupants black and squawking. Crows.
"Am I looking at the crows? I've seen crows, Wilson."
"You're waiting for the windows to open. Like I said, it might be a while."
"Honestly, I'm just going to go down there and remind Angela that we were just talking a minute ago, and ask what's in the tower. Because it's clear that you're not going to tell me."
But I was done talking, and Wilson was ignoring me. I sighed and tried to relax my arms, but my hands were having none of it. The anansi hung over the open air, swinging his leg and humming to himself.
"It's not that I'm not brave," I said, finally. "I just like things to be simple. This doesn't strike me as simple."
"Anything in Veridon strike you as simple anymore, Jacob?"
I sighed, but didn't have an answer for that. I was working on something clever to say when the curtains of the mysterious tower twitched open. Wilson tutted at me and pointed. As if I had forgotten why I was up there, risking my life.
Ezekiel Crane came out onto the balcony, stretching his arms, as though he had just gotten up from a nap. While I watched, my mouth open, he bent and spoke to one of the crows. Then he cocked his head, stood straight as a knife and spoke harshly to the bird. And then he turned and looked right at us. I could see his smile from here.
"Is this the part where we get the hell out of here?" I asked.
"Sure looks like it."
Wilson followed me down the stairs, breathing heavily on my neck as I clumped my nervous legs along. We ran through the crowd of homeless men living in the sanctuary, then got out the door and tried to look nonchalant as we hurried down the street, busy getting lost in the afternoon rush. It was ten minutes of quiet, desperate flight before we realized there was no pursuit.
"It was the crow," Wilson said, breaking the silence.
"What?" I gasped. I hadn't been breathing as I should. I stopped next to a soup cart and used the one stool that was open. The owner gave me an ugly look until Wilson dropped some silver on the counter. We got a dirty bowl of chowder that didn't look completely dead. Brave was something I had given up, so I pushed it to Wilson.
"The crow," he said, picking up the chowder but making no move to eat. "That's how he knew we were there."
"Crows don't talk," I said.
"Neither do dead bodies. Neither do pipes in an empty house," Wilson answered. "Jacob, all the crazy stuff we've seen, you're seriously going to argue over whether that freak can talk to crows?"
I shrugged. Wilson stared at me until, forgetting himself, he put some of the chowder into his mouth. Without chewing, he re-opened his mouth and let the contents slop back into the bowl, which he returned to the counter. The cart owner swept it away, probably to serve it to another eager customer.
"I paid good silver for that," he muttered.
"We all make mistakes, Wilson. Now. What are we going to do next?"
He stood there looking thoughtful for a minute, leaning against the cart and working his mouth silently. Probably still regretting the loss of that silver. Finally, without turning to me, he spoke.
"Say. What was in that house, anyway? The one you and Angela spent so much time inside?"
I was hoping he wouldn't ask. I told him, leaving out a lot of the details and focusing on the conversation between the two ladies of the Council. I knew that if I included the other stuff, the cog-dead and the flower-corpses, if I made those things sound as interesting and bizarre as they actually were, that Wilson would want to go back there. Take some samples. I wanted no part in that. He seemed to know I was holding back, but kept his response to a rude smile.
"So, this really interesting conversation you had with the Lady Bright, while standing in this absolutely dull and nondescript building which, according to your story, may have had a couple bodies in it." He straightened out and shook his head. "What was that about? The stuff about your dad, and you maybe being groomed to take his spot on the Council?"
"Yeah, I'm not sure. It's like she doesn't know the story between me and Alexander." I stayed out of Council politics; even stayed away from the periphery of Council business. Alexander had disowned me, twice now. With the turnover rate in the Council, I was sure there were people in that chamber who didn't even know he had a son. Veronica Bright seemed to be one of them. "What I really didn't like was the bit about how Alexander might not be in any kind of shape to approve of what Angela's doing."
Wilson squinted at me. Alexander had been complicit in some things Angela did a couple years ago, might even have been directly involved. He was usually pretty deeply involved in the dirty side of Council politics. If he was no longer paying that close attention to the chamber games, I wondered what he was doing with his time.
"When's the last time you talked to the old man?" Wilson asked, delicately.
"Probably shortly after he kicked me out of the house." I stared out into the crowd. "Does shouting count?"
We sat quietly for a minute, the cart owner increasing the severity and frequency of his angry stares, until Wilson finally clapped me on the shoulder.
"Let's have a word with Alexander, perhaps?"
"Sure. I can't imagine that going wrong." I stood up and dusted the memory of that horrible chowder from my mind. "But seriously, first we're going to stop somewhere and pick me up a revolver. Just in case."
The old house stood on a little hill, nothing more than a jumble of rocks that rose up out of the street to break up the monotony of town houses and warehouses. No soil on those rocks, except what generations of Burns had brought in, and the ground was hot. We had always had trouble maintaining the formal gardens that were expected of the Founders' estates. Now that the money was gone, nothing remained of those gardens but withered shrubs that clung to the stony ground like dead spiders. Rain and the heat that radiated from the ground had washed the rest away.
The house itself looked like those bushes. Dried out and twisted, roots clinging desperately to the hill, all the color washed out. I remembered grander days, and although the house was no smaller than it had been back then, the whole estate looked like it had collapsed in on itself. And the air, that smell, like burning dust. The ground thrummed with the warm engines of the Deep Furnace. I never noticed the smell when I was a kid. Used to it, I guess.
I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Coming back here, even now, was a waste of time. Alexander had given me his speech, he had said the words that he felt needed saying. I wasn't welcome here. I would never be welcome here. And yet, what that girl had said. Veronica. The way she talked about my father, as though Angela had him by the shirt strings and was just leading him around. I had to know what that meant. I had to know what had become of my father.
He didn't even bother locking the gate anymore. There was nothing to steal here, people knew. What we'd had was mortgaged or sold. Just the house, and the history of our name. Still. You'd think he would lock the gate. Wilson hung back a little bit, his hand resting on the rusted iron of the gate as I walked up to the front door. The cobbles of the walk were uneven, the mortar washed away and the stones pushed up by weeds and erosion, until it was a challenge to walk across them. Have to get that fixed, someday.
I banged on the knocker and waited. A long time, honestly, and when the door opened it protested the unexpected change. Williamson, our family's long time servant, stood with his hand on the door, staring at me.
"Bil… Williamson," I said, remembering how much he hated being called Billy. "Long time since I've seen you. What brings you here?"
"What brings… ha!" He laughed, which was not something he usually did. "What brings me here. Brilliant, Master Jacob. Brilliant!" He shuffled out onto the front porch and put an arm over my shoulder. "Come in, come in. Do come in!"
There was a little hysteria in his voice, and he nearly shut the door on Wilson in his haste to throw the latch. Once we were all in, he rattled a number of locks and then stood with his back against the door, his joviality abandoned.
"This had better be damned good, Jacob Burn," he said, a fresh glimmer of sweat beading across his balding head. "The old man's going to assume you're here to kill him."
"Kill him? You're kidding, right? I mean, not that I wouldn't kill him if it was justified, you understand, I just don't think this is the time for it."
"Don't even joke about it." Billy pushed himself away from the door with an effort and walked to an archway that had once been a coat room. He slid a nasty looking knife from his cuff and slid it into a sheath hanging just inside the arch. This bit of sleight-of-hand got an appreciative look from Wilson, but made me nervous. Last time I'd seen Billy, he had no more been capable of holding a fighting knife properly than of flying. "Let's get everyone a drink, then, and we can figure out what to tell your father about this little visit."
"What to tell him? Tell him that I want to see how he's doing."
"Funny. Two years without a breath from you, and you drop by in the middle of all this," he said. "That'll bring a smile to his face."
"Billy, what the hell is going on around here? Where's my father?"
"Upstairs. Where you're not going, until you know something more about this. Let's get that drink." He walked past us, completely ignoring Wilson, other than to nod as he went by. Last time Billy met the anansi, he had nearly pissed himself. "You still drink, don't you, Jacob?"
"I've yet to be given a good reason to stop," I answered.
"I imagine today will provide plenty of reasons to keep the habit," he muttered, then disappeared down the hall. Wilson popped one of his happier smiles, then bowed and motioned me forward. First time in a while I hadn't been looking forward to a drink.
One of the jewels of the Manor Burn was its bar. This room stood as one of the gatehouses of my childhood. Early memories were of a dark room, sheathed in leather and stained wood, where my father and his friends would retreat from the women and children to discuss important matters. I would sneak down the hall to listen to them drink and laugh and joke. Most of these important matters seemed to involve women who were not mother, but once in a while I would overhear some bit of serious news, some murder or political strategy that had gone amiss. I treasured these early memories, because they had been the last time I looked with awe on my father's role in society.
It was also in this room that father gave me the news that I had been accepted to the Academy, where he told me he had arranged for my PilotEngine surgery personally, and later where he had dressed me down for my expulsion and the disgrace that had followed. Not one word of the people who died in the accident, nor one hint that it was my father's personal surgeons who had planted the seeds of my failure during that surgery, that my PilotEngine was actually an artifact hidden in my chest at the behest of the Church of the Algorithm. But I've told that story.
This is where I came when I moved back into the house, no longer welcome in the barracks or among my supposed friends. This is where he greeted me, where he told me that mother was leaving, that my brother was dead. That I would never be the heir of the Burn line, because he would rather the name die out than pass to someone like me. Anyway.
Through it all, the room remained the same. Too warm in the summer, too cool in the winter. The rows of leatherbound books untouched on the walls. And the bar, broad and shiny, with its glittering glass display shelves, underlit, so that the bottles of rare and expensive liquor sparkled in the dark room. Constellations of intoxication. Even when the money was gone, father did not get rid of the collection, except for what he drank. Which, apparently, had become quite a lot.
Billy was helping, clearly. He laid out three glasses and selected a fine whiskey from the shelves. Fewer bottles now, and those that remained were mostly empty. Billy poured us up and stoppered the bottle, but left it on the bar. Wilson and I sat down and watched my father's faithful servant drain his glass and pour another.
"I have trouble believing that things have gotten tougher than they were," I said.
"More difficult? Probably not. But certainly more immediate." Billy stared at his glass as though it were an oracle speaking wisdom. His eyes were watery and old. I wondered how much of the household he was running these days, how much of the burden of the Burn problem was his to manage. "There has always been an element of the inevitable in what we do, here. The father is getting older. One son is dead, the other" — he glanced at me — "unwelcome. Just a matter of time before things came to a head."
"What, exactly, has come to a head?" Wilson asked.
Billy looked between us. I couldn't tell if he didn't know how to answer, or just didn't know how much he wanted to say in front of Wilson. He took a slow drink from his glass and sighed.
"Jacob, your father is an old man. A troubled man. The events of the last two years have worn him quite thin. And I worry now that he might be breaking."
I drank, to give myself a breath to think out what I wanted to say next. My immediate response wouldn't be appropriate. The whiskey was a good, complicated dram, and I let it sit on my tongue and burn my eyes while I turned the conversation over in my head. Wilson spoke up before I could come up with something polite.
"Mr. Williamson, sir, as much as I enjoy sitting in the wreckage of aristocracy and mourning the passing of an age of privilege and expensive tastes by drinking the master's very fine whiskey, Jacob and I don't really have time for this sort of conversation. There are things that we need to know, and unless you're attending Council meetings, I seriously doubt you're going to be able to answer our questions." He drank the whole glass in front of him with a snort, then slammed the glass on the bar. "We must speak to Jacob's father, immediately."
Billy smiled at that, a kind of sad smile that reminded me of my father on his better days.
"Alexander hasn't been going to many meetings, himself. And as to his ability to answer your questions, well. I suppose that depends on the questions, and how you ask them."
"Do we need to write them on little slips of paper and stuff them under his door?" Wilson asked angrily. "Or maybe give them to you, and let you scurry off like a priest at an oracle? Or do we go to the man, and ask him directly? Because that's how I prefer to ask my questions."
"I can't imagine why the two of you get in so much trouble," Billy said quietly, looking down at the glass that had paused on his lip. "With such subtlety of form and intention. You would do so well in the Council."
"Perhaps the Council could do with a little less subtlety," I said, trying to insert myself between Wilson's rant and Billy's nostalgia. "Might get something done."
"Oh. The Council gave up on subtlety, at least as far as the Family Burn is concerned."
"Hence the jack-knife in your coat room," I asked. "And all the secrecy as to my father's wellbeing? What's going on, Billy? What's got you so badly spooked?"
"Your father," he answered. He looked at me with eyes that were almost apologetic. "That man scares the living hell out of me, Jacob."
"He's become violent?" I asked.
"Not at all. Worse." Billy shakily drank the rest of his glass and stared at the bottle, steeling himself. "He's become a prophet. Or mad. Probably both."
"That one you're going to have to explain," I said.
"It started maybe a year ago. Maybe less." He put his hand on the bottle, thoughtfully tapping his finger against the glass neck. "Just part of Council business. But it required him to review some military records. He came across the accounts of your brother's death. He had read them before, of course, immediately after. But it seemed different, this time. His reaction. Alexander kept the report aside, after his business with Council was over. Kept it in his office. I found it on his desk. Shortly after that, he was required to travel upriver. Again, on business."
"Did he go that far?" I asked, carefully. My brother Noah was in the navy, part of the Exploratory Corps that tested the edges of Veridon's empire in the wilds upriver. He died in something that might have been a skirmish, or it might have been a massacre. The Eranti had been blamed, but no acts of war were ever drawn up. In the end, the whole mess was buried and forgotten. Like my brother.
"Not quite. But he went well beyond the usual borders of the empire. Some sort of trade agreement. They were out of communication for weeks. And when he returned, there was something different about him." A decision resolved behind Billy's eyes. He took his hands off the bottle and folded them on the bar in front of him. "He never indicated anything odd happened on the trip until months later. That's when the visions started."
"We could just cut to the marrow and say that he's going mad," Wilson said. He took the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another. "Here, let me prophesy, tell me how I do. Alexander has seen visions of his dead son, his wife, his lost grandchildren and maybe even one Jacob Burn. He regrets betraying the one, losing the other and alienating the last, in no particular order." The anansi sipped at his whiskey and smiled. "Let's be honest. Alexander Burn is single-handedly responsible for the demise of his family and the loss of its prestige in the Council. This place is falling apart, and it's entirely his fault. Frankly I'm shocked he didn't go mad years ago."
"You shouldn't be so glib about this," Billy said, bitterly.
"No, you shouldn't be so serious about it. I know you're loyal to the man, but he's gone off the rails. What are we going to see if we go upstairs, eh? Does old Alexander walk around in penitent's garb, tearing at the few remaining wisps of his hair and crying out to the darkness? Or has he gone for something more dramatic?"
"That is my father you're talking about," I said. "Maybe we should give him a chance to explain himself?"
Billy sighed, staring at the floor. "No, you have it right. He's fashioned himself a… well. A costume."
"A costume," Wilson crooned happily. "Oh, that's grand. Tell me, is it the robes of a king, or a jester, or maybe one of the Celestes? Or, maybe, just maybe, old Alexander goes around in women's things? Please tell me it's women's things."
"He mutters a lot about fires in the city, and the dead. And sometimes he's right about things, weeks before they happen." Billy covered his face with his hand. "Sometimes it seems like he's talking to the dead, or those who are about to die, or have been dead for generations. And he's taken to wearing a mask. Black. There are words across the face of it, but I don't know the language."
I didn't hear the glass snap in my hand, but I felt the bite of the whiskey as it mixed with the blood lacing its way down my wrist. I turned to look at Wilson, but he was gone, heading to the stairs. I followed. Billy stayed at the bar, talking to us as we left, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.