The Church of the Algorithm is the heart of Veridon. It sits on the south bank of the Ebd river, a gnarled fist grasping the current in fingered bridges, the water flowing over its open palm. Most of the Church is above the river, but the water is harnessed by flow channels, and unknown depths of the holy building exist under the river-turbines and boiler rooms that belch and hiss in the middle of the water.
From the outside, the Church looked like a cancer of architecture. It grew, walls expanding, roofs adding domes and towers that grew together until they became walls. The whole structure bristled with chimneys leaking oily smoke, smoke that pooled in the courtyards that surround the Church. Everything around its bulk was smudged black. The ground rumbled with the hidden engines of their god. I could feel it in my heels as we walked up.
Emily and I stood outside the penitent’s gate, watching the line of beggars huddled in the flank of the Church. These were men and women who couldn’t afford the upkeep on their cogwork, people with clockwork lungs and oiled hearts who could no longer pay for the licensed coggers in the city. They came to the Church, the source, the holy men of cog. They paid in blood and time, lent their bodies to the Church’s curious Wrights. They came out changed, or not at all.
My father had suggested that I come here, when the Academy’s doctors failed, when the best money my father was willing to spend couldn’t find a cure. He had meant it as a threat. I took it as surrender, and left.
“They creep me out,” Emily said. She stood close to me, her hands inside the wide shawl we had purchased that morning. She had a gun in there, to my dismay.
“Not their fault. Rotten people, with rotten hearts.” We went across the stone courtyard to one of the strangled gardens, passing through to the next little courtyard. “What should creep you out is inside.”
“I’ve heard it was beautiful. Or at least impressive.”
“Those are very different things.” I ducked my head as we approached the Church’s hulking flank. “You’ll see.”
Like so many things in Veridon, the presence of the Algorithm was a privilege you had to earn. Beggars stayed outside. Citizens approached the murals, the finished mysteries of the pattern. To reach the heart, the ever changing center of the Church, you had to be a Councilor, the blood of Veridon. Today, we were citizens.
The pillar that dead Wright Morgan had described to me was near the heart, in the privileged audience of the machinery. I wanted to get there, but things were too dangerous at the moment. I didn’t know what role the Church was playing in all this. If they were part of the shadowy pursuit that I seem to have attracted, I didn’t want to walk into their parlor and present my credentials. That hadn’t gone too well with the Tombs, and I thought I knew what to expect of Angela. The Church I didn’t understand.
The doors were plain. The Wright standing to one side didn’t pay us any mind, bobbing his brown robed head at the clink of our coin. He didn’t even ask us which door, just cycled the Citizen’s Gate.
The heavy wood clattered behind us. The corridor was dark and smelled of coal smoke and overclocked engines. The only light was from the altar manifolds around the corner. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. Emily was tugging on my sleeve. She had the gun out, close to her body. The air around us was heavy, the walls slithering with barely perceived clockwork, deep vents puffing and groaning in the darkness.
“Let’s get this over with.” She glanced back at the door behind us. “It’s like being eaten by the city.”
“You would have been a terrible Pilot,” I said.
“Like you would know.”
The closer we got to the mural room, the clearer we could see the walls around us. Everything shuddered with the constant grinding of the engines. The very blackness seemed part of it, vibrating at an incredible pitch. The air in my lungs felt like hydraulic fluid, crashing, surging, driving me forward.
The Citizen’s Room was little more than display. It was a long, thin hall that ran through the width of the building like an axle through a wheel. The walls were alive, cogs instead of bricks, shafts instead of pillars, sunk into the floor or powering intricate murals on the ceiling.
That was all show. The true mysteries were clustered at the altars. Waves of cogwork bulged out into the hallway, like some great sea beast that burst from the wall and beached itself on the stone floor. These were the most active parts of the room, highly articulated, nearly sentient in their complexity.
“Is that a face?” Emily asked, motioning to the nearest altar. I had a brief flash of Patron Tomb, possessed beneath the Church and communing with the Algorithm, but then the vision passed.
“More than that.” I pointed over. The altar was a long tongue of cogwork lolling out from the wall, pistons and gears convulsing in tight waves. The tip of the protuberance ended in the shoulders and a head, a metal man who struggled against the floor. With each convulsion he was swallowed a little, drawn into the tongue like an egg being swallowed by some enormous snake. He gasped and clawed his way forward, scrambling against the stone until the next convulsion; drawn back in, and the struggle continued.
“That’s foul,” Emily said. “People worship these things?”
“They worship the pattern behind them.” I left the cog to its eternal struggle and went on to the next altar. “These things are salvaged from the river, Em. Pieces and bits, dredged up from the depths, sometimes arriving in whole parts. So the Wrights say. The fact that they fit together at all is pretty amazing.”
“The fact that the Wrights spend years piecing them together, now that’s amazing.”
“Obsession is a powerful thing.” I stopped at the next display. It seemed dead, a complicated mouth of pistons that glowed with some inner fire. Waves of heat rolled off it.
“So where’s this pillar?”
“Different room. We’re going to have to sneak through.” The hallway was fairly empty at this hour. Most supplicants paid their awe after work. “For now, just look suitably devout. And put the gun away.”
“This can’t be coincidence,” she said.
“Hm? The gun, Em.” I turned to look at her. She was across the hall, the pistol dangling from her thin hand. “Hide it.”
She grimaced at me, then folded the shawl around the revolver and tucked the bundle under her arm. She motioned me closer. I went to look.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This.” She pointed at one of the altars, a smaller display that looked like a puzzlebox. Sections of it slid and shuffled, disappearing into the box and re-emerging elsewhere. There was some iconography on the tiles, so that it looked like an animated story, but I couldn’t find any rhythm.
“What?” I asked. “It just looks obscure to me.”
“Here, right here.” She had her hand close to the box, as though waiting to pluck up one of the tiles. “No, it’s gone now. Hang on.” Her hand drifted. “There!”
A box shifted out of the central structure of the altar, sliding along the top. It was a music box, the fragile fingers of its comb dancing along a cylinder as it went. Seconds later it was gone, but the music lurked through the hallway.
“It was that song,” I said.
“The music box, that I gave you to take to Angela Tomb.” Emily turned to me, played with her lip nervously. “It’s the same song.”
“And where did you get it?”
“Some guy. He hired me to hire you. I thought it was a Family thing, but it could have been the Tombs, trying to get you up on the Heights-”
“Or it could have been someone from the Church,” I finished for her. “Same as the two who visited your office. And maybe the people who hired Pedr to toss my place, too.”
“Are we sure we want to be here?”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t, actually. But Morgan said-”
“He’s a Wright. Or was,” Emily said. “You sure you can trust him?”
I sighed and looked nervously back at the altar. The music box made another pass, the same song, faster this time. Emily gripped the bundled mass of the pistol tighter, working her hand under the cloth to touch the grip.
“Can I help you, citizen?”
We whirled like children stealing candy. There was a Wright standing there, the guy from the door. He had his hands folded beneficently at his waist.
“It’s all… it’s just.” I gasped, trying to work up the kind of dull awe the guy expected. “It’s amazing.”
“Oh, I understand. The pattern is such a thing to behold. Do you often make the trip to the Algorithm?”
“Frequently,” Emily said. “I mean, every chance we get. In the city. Tell me, uh, Wright. We’ve heard that there are deeper chambers. Where the pattern is more… more raw.”
“Purer miracles,” I quickly added, tapping into my childhood to summon the correct wording. “The raw stuff of the pattern.”
The Wright raised his eyebrows at me, but shook his head. “The inner chambers are reserved for the glorious, my children. The Elders of the Church and the Founders of the city. Now, unless you’ve found a way onto the Council, I don’t think I can take you there.”
“I do,” Emily said. She had the pistol in hand. “We’re very serious about our enlightenment.”
I swore under my breath. Wrights like to talk about their little miracles. I felt sure we could have talked our way in. Emily’s eyes were wild.
“Now, child,” the Wright said, raising his hands and backing away. “There’s no need for violence.”
“Look, holy man. I seek the godsdamn pattern. Show it.”
He paled, glanced at me. I nodded. We got our way.
The Church of God, the Church of the Algorithm. The church of pistons and gears, angles of driving pulleys, escapements clicking, cogs cycling in holy period; a temple of clock and oil. The chamber of my youth.
We stood in the central sanctuary. The room was a geode of machinery, walls of cogs spinning, meshing, divine murals of clockwork that moved across the walls, generations of timed gears scrounged from the river and reassembled. The Wrights searched for the holy Algorithm, the hidden pattern, the divine tumble of tooth and groove that would reveal itself only to the purest, the most humble. Ages of Wrights had worked this building-engine, fitting axles and aligning screws. Always working. Devotion was measured in oily hands and callused fingers.
The room was loud and close. It had been large once, a grand hall dedicated to the study of the hidden mysteries buried under the city. Time had taken that away, layers of cogwork accreting on the walls, clenching tighter and tighter until the ceiling was close and the air was closer. The floor shook with the clashing pistons, the grinding gears.
I steadied Emily. I remembered that I had been overwhelmed myself when I first came here as a child. My father had prepared me, in his way.
“You’ve no right to be here!” The Wright yelled. His voice was a quiet roar among the machines. “This is a holy place.”
“It is,” I said. “We’re only here to show our devotion.”
“Then put the gun away,” he said, nodding to Emily. “And let me call my brothers.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We won’t need your brothers. Not today. But, my dear,” I placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Maybe the gun is unnecessary.”
“What?” she asked, her neck still craned towards the ceiling. I leaned close to her, let my cheek brush hers.
“The gun.”
She stashed it sulkily, then returned to the cogwork.
“She sees the glory of it, son.” The Wright looked pale, but stern. “Not you. Where’s your awe in the presence of God?”
“I’m unable to contain it, Wright. It fled. Now. The Pillar of Deep Intentions,” I said, reciting what Morgan had told me. “Near the Tapestry of Hidden Ambition. I have a deep… fervor… to see it.”
The Wright paled even more. “That is… there is no such miracle in the house of the Algorithm.”
“There is. I believe, brother.” I grasped him by the shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes. “It was revealed to me. Prophecy, call it. Now where’s the pillar?”
“It is not… not for people. Not for the unholy. The pillar is a very peculiar gift of God.”
“Yes, it is. That’s why I must see it. You must show me. Surely you wouldn’t deny a pilgrim?”
He set his lips, looked down and shook his head. Emily hit him.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Morgan gave me an idea. Just hoped to do the easy thing.”
“We can’t stick around,” Emily said, looking down at the fallen Wright. He had crumpled at her touch, and was curled up around his chest. “Make it quick.”
I ignored her. Memory served, and I found the old family pews. Without sermons and choirs, services of the Algorithm were less structured than the older ceremonies of the Celestes. Ironic, if you thought about it. The pews were scattered around the room, facing different directions, arranged in different ways.
I ran my hand over the soft wood of our pews, sat and closed my eyes. That was familiar. My heart seemed to sync up with the room, rumbling in my bones. When I opened my eyes, I saw the pillar, off to my left and across a haphazard aisle.
“Emily!” I yelled, and crossed to the pillar.
“This is it?” she asked. I nodded.
Up close I saw that it wasn’t really a pillar. More like two closely fit camshafts, sheathed together and turning very quickly, so that it looked like a single column. There were carvings on the pillar’s face. The rapid cycle of the shafts animated them, so the patterns danced and crawled up the cylinder. It looked like water flowing, like rivers twisting and slipping through the steel. The air was hot, rushing up from the floor where the shafts disappeared into the stone.
“I know you!” I turned. It was the Wright, his mouth bloodied, holding himself up on my family pew. “Burn, the child. Your father sent you!”
“Not for a long while,” I said.
“He did, I know. The brothers will know.”
“What can you tell me about this pillar?” I asked. He clammed up, then sat on my pew. I looked up the length of the pillar. There was something familiar, near the top.
“I need to get up there,” I said. Emily nodded and looked around for some way to make the climb. The whirling pillar wasn’t something you just shimmied up.
“The pews,” she said.
“Oh. Dad’ll hate that.” I smiled and crossed the aisle, dragging the Wright from his seat.
We tipped the pew up on end. It took both of us. We leaned the heavy wood against a nearby mural. The gears chattered against the wood, then seized up. Something deep in the wall broke, and gears plinked across the stone floor.
“That’ll get some attention,” Emily said. The old guy was gone anyway, snuck off while we struggled with the pew.
“I’ll be fast.”
I scrambled to the top of the pillar, my hands slick against the polished wood. At the top I bent as close to the pillar as I dared, the speed of their cycle a hot breath on my face.
“You aren’t going to believe this,” I yelled down.
There was a cog, meshed between the shafts, driving the pillar. It had many teeth, many gears, concentric circles that slipped together and flowed like quicksilver.
“It’s the Cog. The fucking artifact,” I yelled. Though it wasn’t. Similar, just as complicated, just as beautiful. I realized that its cycle was matched in every mural. The room meshed with it. “It’s running the whole place.”
“Can you get it out?”
The door banged open. There were Wrights carrying ornate hatchets and hammers. I slipped, the pew slipped. It banged onto the central pillar and shattered. I fell, landed among the stacks of cogs that hadn’t yet been distributed to the Algorithm, cracking my head on the stone floor and scattering the gears. I lay there, the world buzzing around me. People were shouting. There was a boom, yelling; I heard Emily’s voice. I rolled onto my side and fought through the haze.
Emily was standing in the narrow aisle, pistol in her right hand, hammer in her left. There was blood on her face and oil on her dress. She glanced at me, concern etched across her eyes. She was shouting. I nodded. She fired at someone unseen, shook the hammer in the air, and disappeared for a second. When she came back there was blood on the hammer, and more on her. She looked at me again. Everything was so loud.
The bullet entered at her shoulder. Just above the meat of her breast, blood puffing up, misting across her face. The hammer slipped from her hand. She gestured weakly with the pistol. Her lips were slack, and she fell.
I rolled to my feet, revolver out. There was a crowd of Wrights, carefully approaching Emily’s body. There were others, on the floor. One had his face caved in, blood and mucus running across shattered teeth. They looked at me. They hesitated.
I shot the first two, bullets into their chests, a slug for each lung. Walking past Emily, I emptied my chamber, dropped the pistol and scooped up her hammer. I didn’t even see the next three, just put the heavy, dead metal through them, crushing them, moving on. A bullet skipped past me. Found the guy, cowering behind a boiler, fumbling with the lever on an antique hunting rifle. Spent some time on him. When I turned around the room was empty, just bodies and smoke. The gear walls were slick with blood, the filth passing from cog to cog, tooth to tooth, each cycle spreading it farther and deeper into the pattern.
I cradled Emily against my chest. She was light, like a bundle of twigs. There was a lot of blood. I picked her up and headed for the door. Just before I got there it irised closed. I heard hammers, and iron. A lot of yelling in the hallway beyond. The door wouldn’t open.
I turned back to the chamber. So many cogs, walls and walls of gears flashing and spinning in a cacophonous roar. There had to be another way out. I set Emily gently on the floor next to the toppled pew and looked around.
Every natural door in the place was sealed shut, clogged with accretions of cogwork. Some of it spun quickly, some creaked lazily, but all of it moved, and none of it allowed passage. In places the original walls had been removed, tunnels burrowed out by camshafts and long boiler pipes that clawed into the foundations of the Church. There were gaps around the pipes that went deep into darkness, but there was no way I could crawl through there, much less carry Emily out.
I went to check on her. She looked okay, I told myself. She was going to be okay. I stuffed her chest with some clean rags and told myself it was going to be okay.
Outside the door the hammering had stopped. Were they getting the Badge, or did the Church have its own security measures? What sort of horrors did they keep in the cellar of this place? Childhood stories bumped around my head. I went back to searching.
If Wilson had been here, we might have been able to climb up to the dizzy heights of the chamber. There were more gaps there, and I could see natural light filtering in from the cathedral’s original stained glass windows. I began to regret leaving him in the cistern to guard the Cog. I looked over at Emily’s still form, breathing slowly. I began to regret bringing her, too.
What I found was hardly the best solution, but it was the only way out. Near the Pillar of Deep Intentions there was a cluster of pipes that led down. The pipes were cold, leading in from somewhere deeper in the Church before heading under the floor. Where they disappeared, there was a long axle, a camshaft that spun slowly around. With each revolution I could see far down, to a stone floor at the bottom. There was light there, and ladder rungs were built into the shaft-way. Maintenance access, probably. I just needed to stop the cams.
I moved Emily closer to the tunnel, then dragged the family pew over. From the direction of the door I could hear machines and heavy footsteps. I was sweating, gods, I was sweating a river. I leaned the pew on its end, the weight almost too much to bear, but I had to do it. Emily started to bleed again. I walked the precariously balanced pew to the lip of the shaft-way. One chance, I suppose. When the shaft cleared the cam, I pushed the pew forward and dropped it straight down into the duct.
It fell about three feet before the cam came back, crushing the wood. The remainder of the pew splintered and fell. The cams ate it up, shattering and scattering bits of wood and leather all over the room. I fell over Emily. Splinters stung my back. There was a lurch, then quiet. I looked up.
The remnants of the pew were lodged in the camshaft’s workings. The whole mechanism moaned under the strain. Nearby cogs pinged and fell out of cycle, teeth grinding against their drive shafts. The shaft-way was clear, but not for long. I wasn’t sure I could make it down all the way. I looked at Emily, at the door, down the shaft. No choice.
I hefted Emily over one shoulder, ignoring her moans and the blood on her chest. I took the rungs three at a time, more falling than climbing. It reminded me of the obstacle courses at the Academy, only much more difficult, with higher stakes. My shoulders were popping in protest.
Some of the pew slipped, and the cams started again. I flinched against the wall, but the cam roared at me, the wide metal face of the thing oily and flat, a hammer to the face, a tidal wave of force and energy. It stopped, inches short of me. I looked up and saw a Wright, looking down.
“Come on up, son,” he yelled. “We can work this out.”
Something loomed behind him. It was a rough parody of a man, ten feet tall with arms of latticed steel and wire. Its clenched fists like barrels.
I let go and dropped. I hit first, cradling Emily. Pain went through my legs and back as I rolled, keeping her off the stone. I was bleeding now. As I hit, the axle lurched, the pew finally shattered, and the camshaft whirred into life. The Wright looked down at me, the cams blurring as they sped up. He shook his head and disappeared.
I stood, picked up Emily, and tried to run down the corridor. The world was roaring in my head. Emily opened her eyes, briefly, and stared at me.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I hissed. “Everything’s okay.”
She coughed blood, then closed her eyes and shivered. I ran faster, faster, blind into the dark tunnels beneath the Church of the Algorithm.