Heart of Veridon

by Tim Akers

  “I could try.” I smiled grimly. “You see my point. If this heart is as powerful as you say, I’d be a fool to give it to you. I understand the need for vengeance, believe me I do, but you’ve been through too much to be trusted.” I turned to go.

  “It’s not a question of helping me! It is not a matter of saving your city! You will help, and your city will fall. What is not decided is whether you will live to tell about it.” She rose to her full height, her every fractured limb and organ twitching in rage.

  “Yeah, crazy bitches don’t get weapons of the apocalypse,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Your own vengeance then.” The cold coming off the cage was titanic. It froze the sweat I didn’t realize was on my forehead. I turned back to her. “I can show you how to use that Cog to save yourself. Save those you love!”

  “My problems are big, and my grudges are deep. But I’ve never felt the need to destroy a city. I handle myself, thanks.”

  “I know you. I scented it, earlier, but I wasn’t sure. Burn, isn’t it?”

  I stopped. “How do you know that name?”

  “Jacob Burn, son of Alexander. A boy of such talent and promise.”

  “How do you know my name!” I screamed.

  “How’s the Air Corps, Jacob?”

  I rushed the cage, yelling. “Tell me how you know my name! Tell me!”

  “Or has the Air Corps not worked out, hm? Because of your PilotEngine, perhaps?” She smiled, a pretty little girl smile. “It doesn’t work, does it?”

  “You seem to know already, bitch.”

  “I do. Because your Engine is not your own. It is mine, Jacob. You are one of my children, crying in the night.”

  Blood rushed through my head. I was numb, tired, instantly drained. “No. It’s a PilotEngine, installed by the Academy. An accident, and now it’s taken on a life of its own, but it’s just that. Just an Engine.”

  “Your father was most anxious to please the Church. The Family’s influence slipping in the Council, his power dwindling, his riches falling away. The Church needed someone, someone they could trust. Take my son, he said. He’ll never—”

  “Quiet!” I kicked the cage with the heel of my boot, shattering the thin covering of frost. It drifted down in fat white flakes that dusted the floor. She was laughing. “Quiet! My father was outraged, heartbroken! He blamed me, the Academy, my mother… everyone but himself and the Church. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

  “Take my son,” her voice was mocking. “Give it to him, instead of the PilotEngine. He’ll never know. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Rage tore me up; my hand was trembling and white.“He wouldn’t. Not his son. Not me.”

  “Tell me, Jacob, how the city deserves to live. Tell me they don’t deserve a taste of that rage. The Council, the Church… your Family. They all knew. How has the city treated you, Jacob? Well?”

  I stared at her. Long ago I accepted the disgrace of my family as inevitable. Only recently had I come to terms with my exile. To learn that it was intentional, that my father had sold my future to curry favor with the Church he claimed to despise… it was too much. It was too much.

  “Forget your Family. Avenge yourself on Veridon, Jacob. This place has used you, as it used me. It doesn’t care about you. Take the heart and let it change you. Let it make you into the vengeance this wretched city deserves.”

  I looked at her, broken and fractured in her cage. I saw myself in the same place, a tool of the Church, my life carved away to serve the city, to feed it, to let it use me and abandon me. Emily stirred.

  “I’m not going to do that,” I said. “I’m not going to become that thing.”

  “You will, perhaps. You never know.”

  I grimaced. The air had suddenly gotten hot. Emily’s eyes fluttered open. She stared in clear shock at Camilla.

  “They are coming,” the girl said. I whirled to her, then to the door. I could hear footsteps.

  “We have to get out,” I said. I lifted Emily. She was heavier, much heavier. She tried to talk, but her voice seemed gone.

  “Behind you,” Camilla said. “I have friends. They will guide you.”

  I turned. A plate in the floor slid away. Black water slapped against the metal, slopped over onto the frosty floor. Two hands slid out of the darkness, pale white and bloated. A man pulled himself into the room.

  “Camilla,” he said, sadly.

  “Wright Morgan.” Her voice was empty.

  He nodded, then took my hand and led me to the water.

  “I can get you to the river, Jacob. No further. I can’t get involved.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Old crimes, friend.” He looked at me glumly, and smiled. “Old sins. Come on.”

  We went into the water. The current was thick under my feet. The river took me in a hand of a thousand tiny, flat worms and bore me away. I moved as though in a dream. I don’t know what I breathed in that time, but when I reached the surface my lungs were heavy with water, and my mouth tasted like swamp sickness. It was the Fehn, the wet mind that wriggled through the mud of the Reine. The flat black worms of the Fehn, helping us through the river’s depth.

  The water broke over my head, and I began to thrash. There was a weak light around me, and the air smelled like close, rotten wood and stale sewage. As I watched, Emily rose up from the water, borne aloft a cloud of mucous black sludge that dissipated as I took her in my arms. I began to swim wildly, losing the battle to Emily’s new weight and the river.

  My hand slapped against wood and I looked around. We were under the city, under Water Street, on the part of the Reine that flowed beneath the streets and houses of the Watering District. There was a dock under my arm, its frictionlamp barely lit.

  I pulled myself up with a rope that was trailing off the pier, then bent down and hauled Emily onto the planks. I did what I could, I did what I remembered from the Academy. She vomited a long, clear stream of water, then lay there, breathing. She opened her eyes, saw me, then closed them again.

  I sat there, huddled over her, shivering and watching her breathe.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Different Friends, Dangerous Friends

  THE DOCK WAS attached to one of the houses on Watering Street by a set of narrow wooden stairs. When I stopped shaking, I forced the door, then carried Emily upstairs. It was a nice house.

  I lay Emily on a couch in the drawing room, then found bandages and a ready-pack poultice in a pantry by the kitchen. I cut away her shirt and dressed the wound as well as I could. There was a thin hole, front and back. It was plugged with matte gray pewter, the flashing flaking off onto her skin. The bullet had gone through. Her survival was a matter of blood loss and the abuse of our trip out of the Church. I wasn’t sure what effect Camilla’s foetal metal had on the wound, but it seemed to have stabilized her. I covered her in a flannel blanket I found in the great bedroom on the main level. There were no sounds in the house, other than my frantic rushing around and the occasional tight sigh from Emily. Once she was settled, I searched the place to make sure we were alone.

  There was a child’s room on the second floor, shelves of wooden toys, dusty. The linen closet smelled like mildew. The bed in the master was made, but there was none of the detritus associated with daily life. The picture frames that lined the hallway were empty, and I found scraps of old photos in the ashes of the den fireplace. I felt confident we wouldn’t be disturbed. I went back to check on Emily.

  She was pale and cold, but still breathing. Shallow. I slipped my hand behind her neck, adjusted the pillow. She mumbled, but didn’t wake up. I checked the curtains, the doors, all the windows. Emily again, still breathing, still pale as death.

  The wine stocks were kept in a dry storage off the kitchen. I got a bottle and a corkscrew, along with a dusty glass that I washed out in the tepid water of the sink. Walking back to the drawing room, I stopped by the door to the private dock below. I had cracked
the frame. I tilted the door open and listened. I heard water, the messy slap of waves on wood planking, creaking rope. It smelled like a drowned dog. I closed the door as best I could and shoved a bookcase up against it.

  The wine was good. A ’14 Sauvignon, vintner from the Brumblebacks across the Ebd. An expensive pour, and I was drinking it out of a greasy water glass in an empty house. Wax from the cork flaked into the glass when I poured, but I didn’t mind. I pulled up a stool and sat by Emily, drinking and watching her and waiting. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

  Her breathing seemed to even out. Her lips were slightly parted, a little teeth and tongue showing between. I wiped the last of the metal dribble away with a rag soaked in the sauvignon. She sighed, and her eyes fluttered open.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “Good wine.”

  “Nothing but the best.” I put the bottle down and brushed her hair from her eyes. “How are you feeling?”

  She cleared her throat and nodded to the bottle. I went to the kitchen and got a shallow bowl. She drank carefully while I held the wine to her lips.

  “Were you trying to drown me?” Her voice was dry, and she dropped half the words, but I understood. “I’m just asking, because I feel that may have been part of your plan.”

  “You feel that way, huh?” I grinned.

  “Purely an observation, Jacob.”

  “Right. So you’re feeling better.”

  “I feel like I was shot, held underwater and then dragged through sewage.”

  “You forgot the wine,” I said, sloshing the bottle.

  “Right. All that, plus wine. Amends made.”

  “It is a very good wine.”

  She struggled to sit up, but gave up and settled into the couch again. She licked her lips and closed her eyes.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it.” I looked over at her and drank a little wine. “What do you remember?”

  “A girl, tied up and half gone. Like some kind of experiment.”

  I nodded. She was breathing slowly, her heart rate slowing down. I thought she was almost asleep when she stirred.

  “So what was it?”

  “Some kind of legend,” I said. “Forget it. It was a dream. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Later. Okay.” Several long, slow breaths. “Where’s Wilson?”

  “I haven’t gone for him, yet. I didn’t want to move you, or leave you here. I dressed the wound. We’ll get to him, when you’re well enough to move.” I put down the bottle and leaned closer. There was fresh blood on her shirt. “I think you’re bleeding again.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I adjusted the bandage, carefully folding her shirt over her breasts. The wound was gummy, a little red seeping at the edges. The plug of metal had worked loose. I plucked at it, and saw cogwork churning underneath. I grimaced, then tightened the cloth, added more gauze, returned the shirt.

  “That should hold. No polo for a few days, okay? Em?”

  Her lips were parted, her breath deep and even. I crept back to the kitchen and cobbled together a meal of stale bread and traveler’s stock in a can. I set up at the writer’s desk in the drawing room, a muted candle by my side so I could see her as night fell outside.

  Her face was a warm moon, floating in the night. I watched her while I ate, and listened to the city outside.

  I MET EMILY before. Before everything, before the shit happened. I met Emily while I was still at the Academy. I just didn’t know her yet.

  We were in the habit, the boys of Twelfth Cadre and I, of getting well-deep drunk on Friday nights after field exercises. It was our only free night. Technically, the sainted elect of the Pilot’s Cadres had every night off. We were the nobility, after all. But practically, between the daily drills, classwork and recovery from the layers of surgery, we didn’t have even minutes to commit to leisure most nights. An accident of scheduling gave us Fridays. Most of those nights were a drunken blur, time spent unwinding. I didn’t even remember most of them. I remember this night, though.

  I was recovering from the final round of the Engine surgeries. They staggered our recovery times, so that most of us made all the classes. It was the responsibility of the healthy to help the invalid, so they didn’t lose class time. I spent the week in my barrack, trying to decipher Hammett’s notes. Scribbles. But I passed all the tests, the examinations. I was cleared to fly. Tomorrow. I remember. It was my last night as a Pilot.

  We went to the Faulty Tooth, our usual place. I felt good. A week in bed on a diet of cereal and water meant I got drunk easy and hard. The night started well for me. Plenty of girls, and they all liked the uniform. Common girls, girls whose fathers I didn’t know. My kind of girls.

  Emily was working. I didn’t know. I suppose it would have mattered to me, at the time. It would have bothered me in different ways than it does now.

  She stood by the bar; we had a booth. Girls circulated, laughing, holding hands. Drinking things we bought them. She was gorgeous and stood apart. She talked to various men, and seemed familiar with the barkeep. I hadn’t seen her before.

  When the time came, when I felt it was right, I went to the bar. Pretended to be impatient for the wench to make her rounds back to us. I stood beside her and placed my order, then stretched and, as casually as a butcher laying out the prize pig, struck the best pose I knew. She smiled, but not the way I intended.

  “Nice pants,” she said.

  “Thank… uh. They’re just part of the uniform.” I flicked the cuff clasps. “Pilot Cadre.”

  “Mm.” She drank some wine. “Well, they’re kind to you. Big night?”

  “Oh, you know.” I rolled my hand to the boys, who were staring at us while they pretended to ignore us. “Just getting out.”

  “Living the big life, huh.” She wasn’t quite dismissive. I didn’t think. I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me or just had a very peculiar way of showing interest. “They let you prizes go anywhere?”

  “Hey, we go to the sky. The sky goes everywhere.”

  She laughed and covered it with a drink of wine. I thought it was a good line. I looked back at the boys. Their attention was absolute.

  “Look,” she said. “You’re a nice kid. And the Corps will be good to you. Stay with it.’

  “It’s not a slag job, you know.” I gathered up the drinks I’d ordered. “Tough work. Keeping the skies safe for citizens like you.” I went back to the boys. They were unbearable.

  I drank the rest of the night quickly. When she left I made some excuses and followed.

  It almost felt staged. I was so fucking angry. There was a light mist, gray streamers drifting across the cobbles, the street rain slick and blurry behind the beer in my blood. She was well ahead of me when I came out. She went around a corner and I followed quickly, fists in my pocket. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I just wanted to talk, to make her see. She needed to see that I was someone worth paying attention to. She would see.

  The night tightened into a narrow, drunken tunnel. Someone slipped out of an alley, near where she had just disappeared. He was closer to her, and faster. Seconds after he slipped around the corner there was a scream. I ran.

  I wasn’t fast enough to save him. Which wasn’t what I was expecting.

  She stood in front of him, her dress ruffled, her hands around a long thin blade. He was against the wall. Some of him was on the pavement, leaking into the drain. She dropped him and looked over at me.

  She was breathing heavily, her careful hair coming out of its tress. I looked down at the blood on her fingers. She tossed the blade onto the steaming body, then wiped her hands on his coat. She took a bag from his pocket and hid it in her dress.

  “Were you… did he try to…” I stammered drunkenly.

  “Either way, are you going to turn me in, Pilot?” She lowered her head, staring at me like a predator. I took a step back. “We don’t all need heroes, friend.”

  I didn’t
know what to say. She left me there, to explain the pilfered body to the Badge that was just about to come around the corner.

  THERE MIGHT BE a fever. I kept checking, but it was hard to tell. Her face was still very pale, but she breathed evenly. I prepared a small meal, best I could do in this weird house. She ate some and then fell asleep almost immediately. I tried to make her comfortable, but it was hard to tell if I was doing any good.

  While she was out I changed the bandage. I was probably doing that too often, but I didn’t know what else to do. I folded her shirt carefully, kept it as decent as possible. The tiny hole in her chest was still bleeding, soaking into the gauze in a startlingly brilliant crimson. I didn’t know if that was normal, or if I should be concerned. I didn’t know what Camilla’s newborn machine was doing inside her, how it was remaking her. I couldn’t see any visible changes on the outside. There were usually changes.

  I needed to go get Wilson. Medicine wasn’t something I did. Generally, I did the thing that necessitated medicine. The precursor. Wilson would know what to do, even if there was nothing to be done.

  I soaked a rag in cold water and put it on her forehead. That didn’t look right, so I folded it and put it behind her neck. She squirmed and started coughing. The rag went back into the sink.

  Wilson would know. I crouched by the front window and peered carefully out into the street. Not much traffic. Night was ending, the first hammered silver light crowding into the overcast. If I was going to do it, I needed to get at it, before morning brought the crowds back to the street. Just an hour, and not even that. I looked back at her. So pale. I checked for fever again. Coughs tore through her chest, upset her carefully draped shirt. I put it back, then got another bottle of wine from the pantry. Morning filled the room slowly, lining her face in pewter light.

  Wilson would know. But Wilson would have to wait.

  IT WAS TWO years. I had enough on my mind during that time to forget Emily. But when I saw her, standing across the bar and smiling… it came back.