“You are the Burn child.” The voice came out of a box, near my feet. Each word sounded like the final exhalation of an old man, dying of wasted lungs.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes.” The Patron had signed over his family’s Writ of Name generations ago, to be enacted on his death. He lived on, here, always dying but never gone. “Angela speaks of you. Who is your companion?”
“This is Wilson, a friend.”
“He is anansi,” Tomb groaned.
“Yes,” Wilson said. He sounded nervous.
“Wilson, of the anansi. We have met before.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Wilson said.
Tomb was quiet for a minute, the body in his eyes drifting slowly around the cold liquid of his chamber.
“Of course I am. Pardon an old man.” His machinery rumbled. “Burn, you are close to Angela? A friend?”
“She and I were friends, when we were younger.”
“And now?” The mausoleum’s voice was slow, each word weighted with time and patience.
“I couldn’t say. Times have been strange.”
“Times have always been strange, child Burn. Time in Veridon is a graceless thing, lurching through the city, leaving ruin and promise equal in its wake. And even its promises are ruinous.”
“Yes, well.” I held down a cough, cringed at the bright crimson pain that arced through my ribs. “This is the sort of strange where she shot me. It’s hard to get past that, childhood friends or not.”
The Tomb was silent for a moment. “When next you are offered the opportunity to die, child Burn, I would consider it more closely.”
“You threaten well,” I said, shifting away from the Patron, “for a body in a tank.”
“I don’t make threats.” He was silent for many long, metallic breaths. “It was advice, from someone who has gone on ahead.”
I waited in the silence, in the dark heart of the strange theater, listening to this living Tomb breath and remember.
“What’s going on, upstairs?” I asked. I had heard stories of how the Patron lived throughout the house, like a pilot on his ship.
“You said yourself, child.” The body behind the eyes seemed to shift. “Strange times.”
When he didn’t go on, I prompted. “Is it the Church? Are they moving against the Council, trying to leverage the Families apart so they can take over?”
He made a harsh noise, something that might have been laughter.
“The Church will never upset the balance. They are the balance. They are the power! No. This is the business of dead men. Their choices come back to tempt us.”
“If not the Church, then who? Someone in the Council?”
Another long silence. Sounds of fighting drifted down through pipes and duct ways, distant and tiny in this crowded room.
“I remember your grandfather,” he said. “Or his father. It’s hard to keep track. We built this lovely city, out here on the edge of the world. Built it on the bones of old gods, among mysteries and wonders.” The voicebox rumbled. “I wasn’t a Tomb then, either. Walking, that’s the name I was born with.”
“Yes, Patron. I know the histories. But what’s happening to your city now?” Would the old man know anything about his Family’s plans, or was his time spent in addled nostalgia?
“Now?” The face seemed to settle, as though it was drifting into sleep. “There is a great deal of desperation, Alexander. The girl has gotten involved in more than she can handle. You shouldn’t have asked it of her.”
“What?” I asked. I exchanged a quick look with Wilson. He shrugged. Tomb had forgotten which Burn I was. He mistook me for my father. “What shouldn’t I have asked of your Angela?”
“Do you keep things even from yourself? A bad habit, Alexander. This plan of yours has become too much.”
“I believed she could do it.” How to uncover the plan without tipping off the source. “But she has failed me, hasn’t she?”
“Your son, he’s the failure. He’s the damn weak link, Burn. You trusted him with too much. Don’t blame my Family for your wastrel’s dim headedness.”
“Listen, you fat shit! Jacob’s business is his own. He doesn’t want to be involved in your goddamn power games. Leave him out of it.”
The Tomb tensed, then seemed to settle, again with that sound that passed for laughter.
“Perhaps he thinks himself more clever than the old man. Perhaps he thinks himself too clever by far.” A long sigh. “Don’t play those games with your elders, Jacob Burn. It’s beneath you.”
“What did my father ask of you, of your family? I’m tired of being jerked around, Patron Tomb. I’ve given enough to this city.” I snarled and poked my finger at his metal chin. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You threaten the dead, child. With what? Disrespect? Violence?” The body shifted behind the green eyes, the puffy face floating near the glass. “Do not think to threaten us.”
“There is more in the world than you, old man.” I tapped my foot against the metal tubes that fed his body. “What good is the Patron if his Family is gone? What will you be if the Family Tomb is no longer respected in Veridon?”
Long silence, metal breath. “He shouldn’t have asked it of her,” he said, crossly, the anger coming through the voicebox as a sharp hiss. “She didn’t grasp the whole picture. I advised against it.”
“What, exactly, did you advise against, Patron?”
“Why are you here, Jacob Burn? What brings you into my house, to disturb my rest? Alexander didn’t send you. Ask yourself why, Jacob. And why, if he hasn’t let you in on the secret, why should I?”
“I didn’t come to see you, old man.” The pain flared in my chest again. I was feeling better, I realized. I was feeling almost normal again. “I’m here on my own business.”
“But not Family business. No, you don’t stand for the Family Burn, do you? Are you here as a representative of your new family? What is that wind-up thug’s name. Valentine?”
“I am acting on my own, Patron. I stand for myself.”
“Noble words. But what you mean is that you’ve been abandoned. Again. Valentine has foresworn your service, forbidden his people from working with you. Isn’t that right?” He seemed to leer up from his watery bed. “That must be a feeling you’re getting used to, eh? Being cut out, like a sickness.”
“I am not alone. Friends stand with me. You don’t know the whole game, old man.” He was distracting me, diverting my attention from the central point. “What is my father’s role in this? What is your Family’s role? If I’m meant to be a part of it, as you imply, then how can I be of any help if no one will tell me what’s going on?”
“You are here for the artifact, yes? The one taken from the Church, in secret. Passed on by a criminal. I believe they buried him in the backyard, all those years ago.”
I ran a finger down the Cog. However it had gotten here, it hadn’t been years ago. The Patron was talking about something else. What could it be?
“Perhaps. What is it? It has something to do with all this trouble?”
“Something. What do you want with it?”
“I’m going to solve this thing, old man. Whatever my father intended, I’m going to put an end to this.”
“Mm. It isn’t the sort of trouble that can be solved, child. Merely avoided, and survived.”
“Is that why you’re down here? Hiding from the trouble?”
“My Family’s future depends on my survival. You wouldn’t understand.”
I laughed. “Did you fear death so much, that you trapped your Family into preserving you? Is that why you signed that terrible contract, blackmailing your Family with their place on the Council?”
“Is this life! This fallow harvest, Jacob, is this living!” Heat rose from the Tomb, and the cables hummed. “You have no idea, sir, what this is. We make sacrifices, Jacob, for family. For the city. Your father, he understands. He knows what it is to sacrifice for family.”
“My father? Noble Alexander! Tell me, Patron, if he understands the value of sacrifice, of family, what is it, sir, that he valued so much that he sacrificed his own family, his own blood, his goddamn son!”
Tomb was quiet. Eventually, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Now that,” I said, leaning in toward the massive face. “That I believe.”
“It is here.”
“What?”
“Your artifact. Third shelf, against the wall. An ivory box. They made it into something holy, those churchmen. I don’t know where the key is hidden.”
I stood up. Wilson was already up the pit, rummaging in the area Tomb had indicated. “Why tell me? If it has been hidden all this time. What would Angela say?”
“Angela has gone a great deal farther than I think is prudent. And I am tired. Now, go.”
He settled down, the face shifting ever so slightly into slack inattention. I bounded up the stairs. When I looked back the face was still open, the glossy green eyes staring up at the darkness with their pupils of bloated flesh.
Wilson brought me the box. We squatted in the walkway. It was a long, narrow container, the flat planes thin sheets of ivory set in tarnished silver fittings. It was a simple matter to crack open with my knife. The artifact clattered out. I squatted above it, looking for damage. It was quiet in the hallways.
The artifact was a cylinder of steel with grooves. Something twitched inside me, like a stolen memory burning through my head. Without thinking I ran my hand down the artifact, triggered some hidden catch, then balanced it on one end. The cylinder blossomed, like a flower.
There was wire, a fly wheel, and a tightly packed central axis of stacked metal segments. It spun up. Plates folded out from the central core, supported and guided by the wires, which stiffened as they expanded. The plates spun in wider circles, shifting, sliding by each other until they blurred into a single brilliant image. Viewed from above it made a picture, like a cinescope.
It was a map. Most of it looked like nothing to me, just lines and rivers and a coastline, far in the top left corner. And then I saw Veridon, or where Veridon should have been, near one edge of the map, in the arms of the Ebd and the Dunje. From there I found the Reine, the Breaking Wall, the Cusp Sea, the Tavis Minor and Major, the Salt Sweeps. It was different than the map I knew, the one I learned at the Academy, but some of the landmarks were similar enough. I followed the Reine where it left the Cusp, far beyond the borders of the Academy’s maps.
There was a city, massive, if the scale was to be believed. It was at the center of the map, sprawled on both sides of the Reine hundreds of miles downriver from the Cusp. So far beyond the ken of the Academy’s far ranging Expeditioner’s Corp I could only stare in amazement. I felt like there was someone over my shoulder, a presence both ancient and young, a presence that stank of fear and isolation. I looked at that city and the phantom in me spoke with my voice.
“Home,” we said.
“Well now, ” Wilson muttered. “Well, well. Now isn’t that interesting.” He hooked an arm under my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. I realized I had been lying down. He propped me against a shelf, littered with the parts of a shattered clock.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. My throat felt like it was lined in barbed wire.
“Be a hell of a time,” Wilson said. “Lots of folks out there. And I don’t think Angela’s going to like us walking out with that thing.”
“Yeah.” I tested my legs, found I could stand. “Well, maybe there’s another way out of here.”
Patron Tomb shuffled, his eyelids cracking just slightly. “There is.”
“You can get us out?” Wilson asked.
“No. But I can show you the way.” He paused, his eyelids flaring wider in surprise. “There is something upstairs, a presence. It has found the hallway.”
“What?” I asked.
“Something… brilliant. What is this thing?” Tomb’s voice was low, in awe.
“The angel,” Wilson whispered. “We need to get the hell out.”
“Yes, you do. My gods, you do. He’s at the door.”
The door at the top of the stairs clanged. Dust settled from the roof in wide sheets. The clanging continued, steady, metronomic.
“This is going to be interesting,” Tomb said. “I should thank you, Burn. It’s a good day you’ve brought me.”
“It will try to kill you,” I said.
“Perhaps. Here,” machines cycled, and a narrow door opened in the wall opposite the main entrance. “That leads to a covered canal near the Bellingrow. It’s quite a trek, I’m told. In case they ever need to get me out.”
“You would never fit through that door.”
“Desperation and technology can do amazing things,” he said. “Now, hurry. He’s persistent.”
We rushed out the door. I paused to look back. The old man’s bloated eyes were settled on the other door, watching the angel break his slow way in, like the tide battering a rocky coast. The door closed behind us.
I don’t remember much after that. The darkness faded into gray, tunnels of brick and dirt that stretched for an eternity and when I came to I was lying on a hard stone floor, Wilson looking down at me.
“You’re trying to show me wrong, son,” Wilson said quietly. His face was bent very close to mine, so I could smell his breath. It smelled like ground up flies and specimen jars. “Trying to die, aren’t you?”
“Far from it.” My voice was a whisper. “Just other folks, testing the theory.”
“Well. More luck than science, this time.” He picked up a tin cup and rattled it around. There was a deformed slug at the bottom, shiny with blood. “Frail gun she shot you with. More ornament than weapon, I suspect.”
“She who?” It was Emily talking, somewhere. I couldn’t see where exactly, but it sounded like she was standing near my head, looking down. Behind me a little. I twisted and saw her face, grimacing down at me.
“Tomb. Little Lady Tomb.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Fine, Em. Whatever. It was the Blessed Celeste. But she looked a hell of a lot like the Lady Tomb.”
“It was her alright,” Wilson said. He grinned tightly up at Emily. “Pretty as you please, nice to meet you, and here’s a bullet for your time.”
“What dumbass thing did you do to get her to shoot you, Jacob? Did you break into her house? Steal some silverware?”
I tried to answer, but it came out as a dry rattling cough. Wilson put his hand on my chest until it settled down. When I could talk again, even I had trouble hearing me. Emily bent down close. She smelled like sweat and dry flowers.
“Badge broke into her house. Stormed the place. We were running, got cornered.” I paused to spit, but came up empty. My tongue felt like a strap of leather. “She said some shit about not letting them get a hold of me. Then she put a bullet in my chest.”
“Hm,” Emily said. She stood up and walked out of my field of vision. Wilson watched her go, then looked back at me. His eyes were carefully neutral.
“How’d you get out?” she asked.
I started to answer, but Wilson shushed me.
“We lost her and found a back door. Things were very…” he paused, nodding to himself. “Very confusing. For everyone, I think.”
“Lost her? You didn’t kill her, did you?”
I shook my head. “Angel’s back,” I said.
Emily raised her eyebrows. “That’s sudden. Thought you said you’d killed it?”
“I killed something. But it was the same guy.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Wilson said, washing off his hands in a puddle of rain water. “I have some thoughts.”
“Are they warm, happy thoughts?” I asked. “Thoughts that are likely to reassure me as to our own safety?”
“Not completely,” he said. “But they may shed some light on what we’re dealing with here.”
“Then keep them to yourself.” I stretched out on the floor and laced my fingers behind my neck. “I’m limiting myself to good news for a little while.”
“Let’s hear it, Wilson,” Emily said, shooting me a cross look.
“Ever since you talked about killing the Summer Girl, I’ve been churning away at what could have happened there. What happened, exactly, to bring about that specific transformation.”
“I hit her with a hammer,” I said.
“Not… gods, you’re horrible. Not that transformation. The one where this little girl turns into a murdering angel.”
“Ah. Continue.”
“Well, the way that the Summer Girl works, the way all engram singers work, is the maker beetles. That and the queen fetus. The Artificers burn a pattern into the queen, the queen takes up residence in the singer’s internal machinery, and then the beetles burrow their way-”
“What?” Emily almost shrieked. “They burrow into her body?”
“You’ve never seen an engram singer?” I asked.
“No, you filthy noble pig. I grew up watching normal people sing normal songs, that they had memorized or made up or something.”
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting I was born so much better than you.”
“Listen, you little fucking-”
“Okay!” Wilson interjected. “Okay. So the beetles burrow in,” he turned to Emily, “through her machine. There are little tunnels that run through her body. Most of the transformation is facilitated by the machine, but it’s the beetles that do it. The machine is kind of like… like a hive, I suppose. Okay?”
“It’s still weird.”
“The point is, there’s a pattern, held by the queen. Sound familiar?”
“Cogwork,” I said. I suppose I had always known the two practices were similar, I had just never thought about how they were almost identical. “The Wrights have you memorize a pattern, they inject the foetal metal, and the metal makes itself into whatever the pattern dictates.”
“More or less,” Wilson said. “The pattern is also inscribed onto a coin and put in with the foetus. But without the pattern, the foetal metal is nothing. Just hot metal.”
“Where do the patterns come from?” Emily asked.
“The Church,” I answered. “And where do they get them? Who knows. But it’s the foundation of their religion.”
“So the Artificers and the Church, they both make their technology the same way?”
“Let’s make no mistakes, Emily.” Wilson sat up straight. “The Wrights only have what they’ve found. Their holy vessels come down the river, and the Wrights catch them and scrounge out any mysteries they can manage. They’re very good at it, and very good at applying what they find, but it’s not creation, really. More like scavenging.”
“And the Artificers?” I asked. I’d never met anyone willing to talk about the Artificers and their technology. Ever since their Guild had been unofficially disbanded and their role in the city gutted so many years ago, their methods were not a matter of public discourse. If they hadn’t been allowed to continue the minor entertainments like the Summer Girl, most folks wouldn’t even know the Guild had ever existed.
“The Artificers? Oh, well. They do things differently. Let’s leave it at that,” Wilson said. “The point is, there’s a pattern involved. Every piece of cogwork, from the zepliners to the simplest abacist, has at its heart a holy pattern of the Wrights. Including your PilotEngine, Jacob.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe they fucked mine up.”
“Maybe. That’s why I keep trying to get a good read off you, with the beetles. Trying to see the pattern of your heart.”
“Anyway. The Angel?”
“Yes, the Angel. You’re sure it was the same one?”
“Sure as hell,” I said.
“But you killed that one, or one very much like it, yes? On the Heights?”
“Right.”
“And that one, the one you killed on the Heights, the one we saw at the Manor Tomb just today, it’s the same one you saw on the Glory .”
“He jumped off, just before we crashed.”
Wilson stood up and, hunching over, began to pace the room. “Jumped off. Just before you crashed. And Jacob, you found this other fellow, this marine, in the Artificer’s rooms?”
“Wellons. Yeah, but he’d been dead for a while.”
“Do you think the Summer Girl was on the Glory?” he asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not. Do you think Wellons was?”
“I didn’t…” I stopped. “You’re saying the Angel was Wellons?”
“At one point. And then, for whatever reason, it left Wellons and became the Summer Girl.”
“What? How?” Emily asked.
“I don’t have an answer for how.” Wilson stopped pacing and pulled the Cog from his pocket. “But I have an idea about why.”
He set the Cog on the ground near my feet, then crouched over his bag and produced a glass jar that jingled as he moved it. He unscrewed the lid and rummaged through the contents, then set what looked like a coin on the ground next to the Cog.
“What do you see?” he asked.
I sat up. Emily and I leaned closer to the two objects. The Cog I knew. The coin was a flat metal disk, dull, with lines etched into its surface and cog-teeth along a quarter of its perimeter. It looked old.
“Algorithm,” I said, pointing to the coin. “That’s one of the Church’s pattern-coins.”
“For cog, yes. This is what serves as the groundwork for all cogwork. Put one of these in your mouth, inject the foetus, and something grows in you.” He nudged the coin around, examining the pattern. “In this case, a musical instrument that replaces your lungs. Or something. I forget. The point is, it’s the blueprint for cogwork. What else?”
I looked more closely at the coin, then the Cog. “I don’t-”
“Pattern,” Emily said.
Wilson pointed at her. “Pattern. Yes.” He held up the Cog. “This is a very big, very complicated pattern coin.”
“My gods,” Emily said. “For what?”
Wilson shrugged. “I don’t know. But we could find out.”
“I’d rather not,” I said. “So, Marcus and Wellons and whoever else was on that list stole this from the city, and now that angel is chasing them?”
“City?” Emily asked. “Which city.”
“I didn’t tell her,” Wilson said. “Yet.”
“We found a map, at the Tomb place. It shows a city, huge, way downriver.”
“Like another Veridon?”
“Nothing like Veridon. Veridon’s a damn outhouse compared to his place. I don’t know what it is.”
“Okay. One thing at a time.” Wilson pointed to me and shook his head. “I don’t think so, by the way. I don’t think they made it all the way to that city. But I think that’s where they were going. They just ran into some trouble.”
“The Angel?”
“The Angel. Maybe he was a scout, maybe he lived well outside the city. If they’d gotten all the way there, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation. I think there’d be a whole swarm of those things turning Veridon to mulch.”
“Shit,” I said. I meant it, too. Veridon had been tough on me, but it was home. People here I cared about. Streets and buildings I’d known my whole life. “So, what? They found an outlying building, stole the Cog, and then the angel caught them and chased them.”
“Better than that. Or much, much worse. Depends on your point of view. I think they found that angel, killed him, and stole the body. Or at least part of the body.”
“Why would they do that?” Emily asked.
“Question for Marcus. Or Wellons. Maybe that Sloane guy you met. But I think they‘ve done it before.”
“Stolen body parts from angels?” Emily asked.
“Where does the cogwork come from, Emily? Where do they get their patterns? They aren’t making them up, that’s for sure.” Wilson was pacing again, agitated. He stabbed his finger out at us. “That’s for damn sure. They’re getting it from somewhere else. What’s to say that this isn’t the source?”
“We should ask the Church,” I joked. “I’m sure they’ll be very forthcoming on that.”
“Not the Church,” Wilson said. “But the people on your list. Angela Tomb. That Sloane guy. They’ll know.”
“Yeah, well. But Angela doesn’t seem much like talking. And Sloane? I’ll ask him, if I find him. But what makes you say they stole a part of the body?”
“Because now we have it. And they want it back. And so does the original owner.”
“The Cog?”
“Yeah. I think this is nothing less than that angel’s pattern. I think it’s his damn heart.”
“So what happened with Wellons?” I asked. We had decided that whatever the Cog was, we had to keep it out of the hands of the Council. For now at least. I wanted to know more about what we were doing, what we were handing over.
“For whatever reason, the angel seems to need a host. I’m going to assume that has something to do with this,” Wilson said, holding up the Cog. “And so far he’s only infected people who have been heavily cogged. You said Wellons was an assault trooper, right?”
“According to his uniform, yeah. And those guys are metalled up to the balls.”
“Lovely terminology. And the Summer Girl, we know, had the beetle hive implanted. None of the other Artificers would have had any modifications, so she was the only choice.”
“Infect? Like he’s some kind of disease?” I asked.
“More like a parasite,” Wilson answered. His eyes had a far away look, and his voice was drifting into university professor territory. What had he done with his time, before his days as a black-market doctor? “Takes over the body and the mind, remakes it. If the angels really are the source of Veridon’s cogwork, then who knows how advanced they are. What they’re capable of.”
“That’s creepy,” I said. “But isn’t that Church theology? That the early Wrights were able to heal the dying Camilla, and in return she gifted them with the first cogwork?”
Wilson shrugged. “Seems a convenient story, but maybe. Maybe.”
“So it infected Wellons,” I said. “Then followed Marcus back to the city. For whatever reason it had to leave him, then took over the Summer Girl. So what happened when I killed her?”
“You tell me. What happened?”
“She… fell apart, I guess. It looked like the maker beetles, leaving her body, splashing down into the rain.”
Wilson nodded. “And it might have been something very similar. Maybe the cog-heart serves as his pattern, holds him together. And he needs the host body just for the pattern in their implanted cogwork. Something to hold him together. Disrupt that, and the thing falls apart.”
“And then what? How does it find a new host?”
“Goes dormant? Reforms somehow, and latches on to someone new? This is all just theory, Jacob.”
“But we saw it again, so we know it happened. Somehow the thing reformed.”
“A new host,” Emily said. “Who was at the party?”
“Pilots,” I said. “Lots of Pilots.”
“There you go.” Wilson spread his hands and grimaced. “If cogwork is necessary for infection, Pilots are pretty close to the perfect candidate. If one of your Corpsmen wandered down into the gardens, maybe looking for you, they could have stumbled into the angel’s scattered corpse and gotten infected without knowing what happened.”
I looked down at my palms. “How did I not get infected?”
“Who knows? Maybe when you disrupted the body it needs some time to spin up again. Let’s just say you got lucky, and you’ll be more careful in the future.”
Emily had been quiet, standing a little ways away from us. I turned to her.
“So what are we going to do now?” I asked her. When she didn’t say anything, didn’t even seem to hear me, Wilson stepped in.
“Badge is after you, that thing in the sky is after you.” He shrugged. “Sounds like maybe the Family Tomb is after you, too. We’re going to need a better place to hide.”
“What’s wrong with here?” Emily asked. She seemed distracted.
“Not deep enough. Too close to the Families, to the centers of the Badge’s power. Too many crowds. People here don’t love the Badge, but if they’re serious about finding you, well. Someone will talk. Enough money and enough threats, people will talk.”
“So where do we go?” I asked. I stood and stretched my back. My thighs felt like lead, and my chest was stiff. “I can’t go far, or fast.”
“I have some ideas. We’ll wait until tonight, until you’re a little better.”
“I feel pretty good right now. I just don’t want to push it. And with that thing in the air…”
“I think the Tomb set you up,” Emily said. Wilson and I stopped and turned to her.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think she set you up. That bit about the Badge interrupting, I don’t think that was part of the plan, but I think she set you up.”
I walked carefully over to the wall and sat down with my back against it. “What makes you say that, Em? What do you know about this?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing solid. But the Cog missing like that? It hadn’t been there long, like they were waiting for it to show up. And they had to know you’d come for it.”
“Maybe. But that’s hardly evidence.”
“And on the Heights too, I think.”
I tensed up. I’d been wondering about the Heights, what Emily knew about that job, really.
“That job wasn’t from Valentine, Jacob.”
“Okay,” I said, carefully.
“I wanted to make sure you’d take the job. I knew you wouldn’t turn down work from the old clockwork.”
“That was risky. If he found out, if I said anything to him about it. A real chance you took there, Em.”
“The drugs, with Prescott, that was his. But the music box wasn’t.”
“That got Prescott killed, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I flexed my hands, loosened my shoulders. “So. Who did the job come from, then?”
“I don’t know. A guy, he looked… I don’t know. Noble.”
“Like he was a Family guy. Someone’s important son?”
“Right. He gave me the box and told me it needed to go to Tomb. At the party. He said you needed to do the job.”
“You were really looking out for me there, Em.” I kept my voice as even as I could. “Really watching my back.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re pretty good at handling yourself. I figured it was some Council thing. Some… political statement.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So. Angela Tomb gets me up on the Heights, then tries again at the Manor.” I remembered the troop of soldiers outside my door up on the Heights. I hadn’t given that much thought, what with all the bloodletting and falling out of windows. What had they been doing there? They couldn’t have found Prescott or the Artificers, then rushed to arrest me on basic assumption. “So what does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Emily shrugged. “Honestly. I could be wrong about the whole thing.”
“Well. We’ll see. Anything else, Emily? Anything I should know?”
She shook her head, kind of sadly. “Nothing else.”
“Where does that leave us? Angela Tomb wants me alive, then she shoots me.” I leaned over and took the Cog from Wilson and held it in my palm. “And lots of people want this. How many groups are we talking about? Tomb. Whoever’s pushing the Badge around from inside the Council. Whoever paid Pedr to break into my room. Someone sent that gun up to the Heights, that wasn’t Angela. Sloane, we know he visited Emily after I left the Cog with her. And his name’s on that list, along with Angela, Marcus, and Wellons.” I looked up. “Lotta folks interested in us.”
“What do we do?” Wilson asked.
“I don’t know. Hide some more. Dig up some information about this thing. Why everyone wants it. Figure out who we’re up against, and why.” I slipped the Cog into my coat pocket and stood up. “But first, we hide.”