“I gave you your chance, Alexander,” Angela said. She had one hand on her hip, the other flourishing a heavy caliber dueling pistol. “We can’t have it both ways. Give it up, Jacob.”
“I can’t, Angela.” I twisted the shotgun in my hands, like a wet rag. “I just can’t do that.”
“We’re your family, son,” Alexander said, though his spirit wasn’t really in it. “Who else are you going to trust? They have the Cog. We really can’t let them have you as well.”
“But you won’t be content with just me. Will you? You’ll want the Cog as well, and what sort of terms will you come to with Sloane to get it? The Cog is powerful, but nothing like it could be if you had my heart to go along with it.”
“One item at a time. We can enter negotiations with Mr. Sloane later on.” Angela smirked, then flicked her pistol to the guards. “Now. Put down the shotgun.”
“Where’s Emily?” I asked. “Where’s Sloane holding her?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m going to save her. You fucks won’t take care of your girl, I’m going to.”
“Always the brave lad,” Angela said. “Always the hero. You’ll never get her. They have her locked up tight, up on the Torch’.”
“Why up there?”
“Council’s got part of the base sectioned off, has for years,” Alexander said. “Experiments, trying to break free of the Church’s grip. The surgery they’re giving her, it’s very specialized. Building cogwork without a church-sanctioned pattern. Very difficult stuff. And the equipment they’ll need to do that, it’s up there.”
“You have to let me go. You have to let me help her.”
“No, we don’t,” Angela said. “Now put down the shotgun and come with us.”
“You heard the lad!” A voice called up from below us. I turned and looked down.
Wilson. He was standing in the middle of the gritty sand below. His skin looked like it had been scrubbed with charcoal, and he was wearing a knee-length black duster that was singed at the edges. He looked blasted. His hands were in his pockets, and his spider arms were bunched up around his shoulders like restless wings.
Angela and a couple of the Housies joined me at the railing.
“A friend of yours?” she asked.
“Maybe. Getting hard to tell, these days.”
“Ah, yes. Still mourning the affections of our little spy-whore. Tell him to come up here, or you’re both dead.”
“Wilson…” I yelled.
“I heard the bitch.” He took his hands out of his pockets and held them wide apart. Each held a small glass jar, squirming in the pale light. “I’ll be right up.”
He dropped the jars, then immediately leapt onto the iron corkscrew staircase. The jars broke with a muffled pop, and glittering hordes swarmed out onto the sand. Beetles.
“Put him down!” Angela screamed. The guards responded, without thinking.
They really were packing bane in those shortrifles. The shots crackled off the wrought iron, the staircase began flaking away like thin ice. Wilson bounded up, much too fast for their aim. One got close and the anansi yelped, but he kept coming. I turned and smacked the nearest guard in the head with the butt of the shotgun, then scooped up his weapon as I slung Emily’s shotgun over my shoulder.
“Jacob!” Wilson yelled. I looked down, only to see him gesturing up. I looked up. At the Singer.
Her eyes were open, her arms raising slowly in benediction.
I threw myself back, just as the rest of the Housies were rushing forward to take me. I fell between them, sliding on my back. Angela was still looking down, firing wildly at Wilson.
My father was on one knee, hands folded calmly on his leg, facing the Singer. I covered my ears and curled up.
Her voice was catastrophic in the close roof of the Dome. My memories of her were quieter, a gentle murmuring that splashed through the building like a stream. This was a tornado, an avalanche of voice. It was three years of pent up divinity, forgotten by its servants and furious in its glory.
We fell, even my father. The building shook. I saw Angela tumble forward, screams drowned out by the Singer’s master stroke. None of the Housies had caught on to what was about to happen, and lay prone, clutching at bloody ears. My father was flat on the floor, his face slack. He might have been asleep for all I could tell. Wilson crawled over the top rail, grimacing. He scuttled to me and pulled me up.
I tried to tell him where Emily was, and what they were going to do to her. My voice was silent against the Singer’s roar.
We ran to the staircase. It was crumbling, the iron brittle as glass. The steps twisted under our feet, the handrail coming off in sharp flakes whenever we stumbled and reached for its false support. We fell the last ten feet as the whole latticework failed. I came down in the sand, grimy with bugs.
I landed next to Angela. Her mouth was open and bloody, half full of sand. Her arms and legs were awkward, and her chest was caved in. I stood up and ran. Out the door into the impossible quiet of the streets, the crowd gathering at the unexpected noise coming from the Dome; the gunshots, the newly ignited Singer pouring out the open door. I pushed past them into the street and ran, the world a mute humming in my ears. No sound but the impact of my feet, my heart, my lungs. The sun was incredibly bright, the buildings seemed to peel back and the sky was blue and quiet.
Wilson caught up with me and pulled me into an alley. I looked at him once, the grit on his burned face sticky with blood. I put a hand on his shoulder, then leaned over and retched onto the cobbles.
We ended up in the basement of a burned out house on the Canal Blanche. My hands were still shaking as I set down Emily’s shotgun and collapsed against the mossy brick wall of the cellar. Wilson looked nervous.
“You look like hell, boy,” he said. “What was that all about?”
“How did you get there?” I asked, ignoring his concern. “And what happened to the Cog?”
He grimaced, then squatted on his heels across from me. His many arms folded out, hanging in a rough circle around him like the spokes of a wheel.
“They came for us again. Quieter his time, more serious. Some of them were in the water, using some kind of breathing mask. There was no way out.”
“There must have been,” I said. I lay the Cog beside the shotgun, then struggled out of my coat. “You’re here.”
“They didn’t care about me. They came for that trinket.” He watched me carefully, relaxed but ready. “Showed up right after you left, actually. I put up a fight, but they had the numbers.”
“So how’d you get out?”
“I ended up on the ceiling. After the collapse, I crawled up into some of the new cracks.” He shifted awkwardly, his hand running nervously over his scalded pate. “They tried to burn me out.”
“And the Cog? Where was it, while you were hiding away?”
“Long gone, Jacob. The ones in the water, they got it before I even knew they were there. They took it down through the channels, then blew it up behind them. That’s what took the roof.”
“I left it with you, Wilson.” I lay my hands palm up on my knees. “I trusted you.”
“We trusted each other, Jacob. Funny timing.”
“What?”
“I said, funny timing. You left with Emily, and they came in on your heels.” He flexed his extra arms nervously, his prime arms folded loosely in his lap, hand near the open fold of his scorched coat. I remembered that he had two knives, and I had only seen one broken in the cistern. “You see anything on your way out? Talk to anyone, maybe?”
“You have to be kidding,” I said. “All that’s happened, all that we’ve seen… you’re accusing me of selling you and Emily out to the Badge?”
“You show up, take the girl, and rush right out again. Tell us some kind of story about hitting the Church of the Algorithm,” he said evenly, the anger I expected paved under a layer of fatigue. “Badge walks in, and you’re heading out the door.”
“So you think I told them where the Cog was and cut my losses? That I made a deal?”
“Makes some sense. You had Emily with you, knew she wouldn’t get hurt. Probably couldn’t just hand the Cog over, cuz they’d put you down rather than pay you. Me, they weren’t so careful about.”
“Why in the hell would I do that, Wilson? Why would I sell you out?”
“Things are bad, Jacob. Complicated bad. Maybe you found yourself a way out, and knew I wouldn’t take the deal. And you didn’t want to give Emily a chance to turn it down, either.”
“Seriously, fuck you.”
He shrugged. “My loyalty is to her, Jacob. Not you. If you sold us out, I’ll learn of it. If you let them hurt her-”
“Let them hurt her? Let them? Do you have any idea what she and I went through after we left you? As long as they didn’t have the Cog, it didn’t matter what they did to me. Soon as you let them get it-”
The knife was against my throat before I could move. It was plenty sharp.
“Say that again,” Wilson said, quiet. “Tell me it was my fault one more fucking time.”
I swallowed and tried to back into the wall. His hand followed me the whole way, steady as stone.
“Two ways we can go from here, Wilson. One of them gets Em killed. The other one, we talk this out, come up with a plan, and break her out.”
“And kill the people who have her.”
“Of course.”
“You’re assuming that I can’t get her free myself, Jacob. That I need your help.”
“You do. And I sure as hell can’t do it without your help.”
He stared at me for a while, his dark eyes reflected in the barbs and arcs of his blade. Finally he put it down.
“This is true. So tell me, Jacob Burn. Where have you been? And what shall we do about our girl?”
“You won’t believe me. I don’t believe me. But I learned that the thing in my chest is a very old artifact, hidden there with my father’s blessing. And the Cog is the heart of a dead god.”
“We already knew that,” he said.
“Now we know it for sure. I’ve seen another one, in the Church of the Algorithm. And I’ve met the girl.”
“Girl?”
“Camilla. Martyred goddess of Veridon.”
I told him loosely where I’d been, what I’d seen. He looked at me without expression. When I was done he nodded once.
“These things are connected?” he asked. I nodded. “So, the Council found something and they’re trying to keep it from the Church.”
“Better. The Council is trying to keep it for themselves. There’s a split, the old Families and the Young Seats. Like you said, things are bad complicated.”
“And they’ve taken Emily-”
“To get to me. To lure me in. Also, they’re planning on offering her to the Angel. They’re making her the ideal host.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Your father?”
“Ambushed me twice, betrayed the Council to deal me to the Church, then tried to get me to surrender to the Tombs. You saw that part.”
“Yes. I followed you from the Manor Burn. That servant, what’s his name? William. He left right after you.”
“Probably to warn my father. I had to move slow, avoid the patrols. That’s how Tomb had those guards waiting for me.” I crossed my arms and gave Wilson a curious look. “Why were you watching my house?”
“I had my suspicions. If you dealt us to the Council, it was only a matter of time before you showed up at home.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“So. What do we do?”
I sighed and folded my hands.
“We need to decide who we trust. Tomb told me that Emily is with Sloane. It was the Badge that attacked you? You’re sure?”
He nodded.
“So that makes sense. She said they had her on the Torchlight.”
“The Torch’?”
I nodded. “In the base.”
“That’s a fortified compound. We’ll never get in there.”
“Oh, I imagine we’ll get in. They want us to get in. It’s getting out that has me worried.”
“That’s something that has us all worried, Jacob Burn,” a voice said behind me, from the shadows of the shattered staircase. The voice was musical, pipes and pistons in a semblance of humanity.
Wilson didn’t move. My hands were working the action on Emily’s shotgun even as I remembered it was empty.
A dark bulk resolved into a man of cogs and metal. Valentine. He was not alone. Others stood behind him, keeping to the shadows, weapons in their hands. I counted at least three.
“How do people keep finding me?” I muttered. “What the hell are you doing here, boss?”
“You are cutting a wide wake through the city, Jacob. I have had eyes on all the major players for the last couple days. Ever since the incident at the Tomb Manor. When your path crossed your father’s and the Lady Tomb, I decided it was time to step in. We have some things to discuss, I imagine.”
He took an envelope out of his waistcoat and dropped it in my lap. It was addressed to Valentine, City of Veridon. The edges of the envelope were dirty and worn. I opened it and read the single sheet of paper inside.
– As we agreed: GLORY OF DAY. Have your best men on board.
– Signed, Marcus Pitts.
“Yeah,” I said. “I imagine we do.”
“I do not think of it as dishonesty, Mr. Burn.”
We were in a carriage, too many of us for the cabin. Wilson and I stank of ash and sewage and blood. The leather seat creaked as we tried to make enough room for all of us, and our guns and knives and mistrust.
“I do. It’s nothing personal, Valentine. But all this, I have to call it dishonest.”
“Good to know it’s not personal,” Cacher spat. He had been glaring at me ever since he stepped out from behind the boss back in the basement. He had a handful of dirty looks for Wilson, too. Some history there I didn’t know.
“Quiet,” Valentine said, gave Cacher the barest nod. “Jacob, you have to understand my position. I cannot stand up against the Council and the Church. It would be open war. My organization can not have that fight.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I wasn’t sure I could. I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t tell Emily.”
“You knew about her?”
He shrugged. “I knew something wasn’t right. But I wasn’t sure.”
“Where is she, bastard?” Cacher asked, menacing me with his black, blunt shortrifle.
“Fuck off, Cach.”
“Don’t tell me to-”
“Fuck off, Cacher,” Valentine said.
“What else did you know about?” I asked. “About the Cog, and the Council? How did you find out about all of this?”
“Ah. Straight from Marcus, actually.” Valentine shrugged and tried to settle more comfortably into his bench. Cacher struggled further against the wall of the carriage. The other two thugs were up top, driving us somewhere. “I started getting messages from him two weeks before your spectacular accident. More and more desperate, the closer he got to Veridon.”
“You knew what he had?”
“Not completely. He wanted help, he was scared. Of that Angel, in retrospect, though he never specified. It was killing the expedition, one at a time. He was scared he wouldn’t make it to the city.”
“Like she wanted,” I whispered, thinking of Camilla’s plan to lure vengeance into Veridon.
“Who?”
I shook my head. “So, he wanted your help. And he tried to buy it with the Cog?”
“Yes. With knowledge of what it was, where it came from.” Valentine spread his wide, flat hands. “I couldn’t do it, obviously. Too many variables, and no idea if I could trust him.”
“So you sent me?”
“I knew when he was coming. Knew he was pursued. I wanted a man in place.”
“Me?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to get back to this, boss, because I really feel that it’s pretty important. You could have told me.”
“I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea what you were going into. How could I warn you?”
“You could have told me to be prepared.”
“Jacob, the day I have to tell you to be prepared for trouble, that’s the day I will no longer trust you.”
I leaned back in the chair, staring off into the distance. Veridon rumbled past us through the wire webbed protective glass of the carriage.
“So what now?” I asked.
“I’ve been on the sidelines long enough. Things are precarious enough, now.” He futzed with the clasp on his cuff, unbuttoning it, adjusting the shirt sleeve and reattaching the cufflink. “I think it’s time for me to help.”
I laughed quietly, once. “You want to help? Now? All the time I spent hiding, unarmed, the Badge and Council and Church trying to kill me. You want to help now?”
He shrugged. “Too many factors, Jacob. But I’m here now. Don’t turn down an ally. You could use a friend.”
“Yeah,” I said, thoughtfully. “Yeah, I could. Okay. You want to help me?” I pushed the empty shotgun into his lap. “Let’s start by loading this gun.”
Valentine smiled. “That’s my Jacob. That’s the way.” He reached behind the seat and produced a box of shells and handed them to me. Just like Valentine, to have an extra box lying around.
I loaded the gun, one shell at a time. It held six shells, lined up down the barrel. A good gun. I couldn’t help but think of the Angel, coming down the hall as I knelt in the Manor Tomb, fumbling with the cylinder. That’s what it comes down to, sometimes. Clear action in the face of danger. Keeping your head when everyone else around you is freaking out. I loaded the gun smoothly, one shell, then the next, until the cylinder was full. I snapped the gun shut, then laid the barrel against Valentine’s chest. Cacher raised his alley piece and snarled.
Wilson’s talon tipped arms pounced forward, a sharp edge resting on Cacher’s face, his neck, below his eye. He pushed just hard enough that Cacher had to strain backwards to keep his skin intact.
“You’re going to put your gun down, son,” Wilson said, his voice low with menace and anger. Cacher complied.
“This isn’t necessary, Jacob,” Valentine said. “You can just tell me to fuck off. I would understand. Probably what I would do in your shoes.”
“You wouldn’t be in my shoes, boss. You’d hire some sucker to get the shit kicked out of him. You stopped getting your hands dirty twenty years ago.”
“On the contrary. I keep my hands quite dirty. Part of the job. But you’re right, I wouldn’t let myself get where you are. So.” He kept his clockwork face neutral, wouldn’t look at the gun. “What now?”
“I want to be clear about this. I appreciate what you’ve done for me. Took me in, watched out for me. Gave a fuck when no one else would. But I think this was one too far. I don’t want you as an enemy, Valentine. But I think I’m done with having you as a friend.”
“Not the best move, Jacob. It’s a different world, without my protection. Where would you be right now, if I hadn’t put you on that zep with Marcus? You wouldn’t have known anything was up, and the Council could have plucked you off the street without a word of trouble. You’d be dead, and you wouldn’t even know why.”
“Maybe. Would’ve saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. No, boss, this is it. Pull it over.”
He banged on the carriage roof and we pulled over. I kept my gun on Valentine as we got out. Wilson left Cacher with a healthy set of new scars. We backed into an alley, the two thugs on top watching us go. Valentine smiled and waved.
“Good luck, Jacob. And stay out of my sight for a little while.”
“I’ll probably be dead, boss. But I’ll keep it in mind.”
We slipped away. A second later the carriage started up. When it was gone we ran, keeping buildings between us and the sky. Dark clouds were rolling in, and dusk settled with the sound of distant thunder rolling down the Reine, echoing off the city’s high walls.
Someone had been in my room. No real surprise. They had torn through the rest of the city looking for me, I suppose someone along the way might have stopped in to my rented quarters up here on the Torch’, to see if I’d left anything important behind. Their mistake. I didn’t own anything important. That was the key to my life. Mobility, emotional and physical.
The bed had been taken down and cut open, scattering little curls of excelsior across the wood floor. All my drawers had been opened, the cabinets pulled apart. I didn’t keep a lot of things, but everything I kept was in a pile on the floor.
“You need a woman in your life,” Wilson said. “People shouldn’t live like this.”
“Shut up, bug,” I said. I kicked a path through the room, then locked the door. The only light was the lightning flicker coming in through the massive river-side window that took up one wall.
“You shouldn’t call me that. Bug. I thought better of you than that.”
“It’s been a shitty day. I can be unexpectedly cruel, on days like this.”
“Well,” Wilson collapsed onto the shredded bed, puffing up a cloud of wood shavings. “Let’s try to focus that cruelty. We have need of it.”
“This isn’t about revenge. For me at least. If it was just revenge I’d have burned out long ago.”
“So, what? You’re going in because you love the girl?”
“Let’s not be stupid, Wilson.” I closed all the drawers, opened the curtains wide. The rain was really coming down. Hell of a storm. “I’m doing this because it’s what I should do. It’s what I’d want done, if I were in there.”
“So loving the girl has nothing to do with it.”
I sighed. I wasn’t going to tell him about Emily, about her job with the Families. It wasn’t worth the argument.
“Fuck off, bug,” I said quietly.
He laughed a genuine laugh, the kind of laugh I didn’t expect from him. He lay on my bed with his spider arms splayed out, his hands laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
“So what are we doing, Jacob Burn? You got us up on the Torch’ well enough. How much harder is it going to be to get in the Academy?”
“Very much harder.” I tossed a revolver and a box of shells I had picked up down on the bed, along with the box of shells Valentine had given me for Emily’s shotgun. I wanted something to eat. I started rummaging through the detritus of my house, to see if I’d left anything, anything that hadn’t spoiled. “The facility that my dad was talking about, I think I know where that might be.”
“From your days in the Academy?”
“The very days. Places we weren’t allowed to go, hallways that always had guards and locked doors. I didn’t think much about it at the time.”
“How do we know your father is telling us the truth?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well. He’s betrayed you how many times in the last two weeks?”
“Twice. Once to Angela. And I’m counting the original betrayal, with the PilotEngine. I think that one will always count, no matter how long ago it was.” I found some crackers. They were stale.
“Right, so, how do we know he isn’t going for three? He told you about Emily, about where she was. How do we know he isn’t dealing you to the other faction in the Council?”
“Oh, I’m sure he is. I’m sure he and Angela gave me that information on the off chance I slipped away. I’ve proven so elusive, you know.” I sat down on the bed and crunched my way through a messy stack of crackers. “I’m a dangerous man, Wilson.”
“And they’re going to contact the rest of the Council, to let them know you’re coming?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s necessary. They knew we’d figure it out, eventually. Knew we’d figure out where she was. They’re waiting.”
“So this is a trap?”
“Oh, gods, yes.”
“Then what the hell are we doing?”
“What they expect. Right up to the moment we do exactly what they don’t expect,” I said.
“Which is?”
“Well,” I rubbed my eyes and looked down at Wilson. He looked terrible, in his burned clothes and charred skin. “I was hoping you had an idea.”
“Oh, no. I got you out of the Dome. That was my daring rescue. This is your show, Jacob, my boy.”
“Yeah. Well.” I stood up and crossed to the window. “It’s going to have to be a hell of a thing.”
I watched a zepliner dashing in for the docks high above us. Lightning flashed along its sides, glimmering against the pale skin of the anti-ballast. The crew was on the main deck, hauling line and securing cargo. It looked like they were crashing, though I knew better. The docks were just above us, behind the stone walls of the Torch’.
“I know how it’ll happen,” I said.
“They’ll fill us with lead and burn our bodies on the signal fire?” Wilson asked.
“You’re a good guy to have around, Wilson. A real damn pick-me-up.”
He chuckled. “You have a plan.”
“No, no. But I have an idea.”
“Good enough.” He sat up and munched forlornly at a cracker I had dropped. He grimaced, set the cracker down, and looked around the room. “I’m getting tired of waiting.”
“Yeah, me too.” I packed up the revolver, threw Emily’s shotgun over my shoulder and shoved my way through the pile of junk to my front door. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You gonna tell me how we’re going to do this?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said. “I don’t believe me.”