Heart of Veridon

by Tim Akers

  “Where is she?”

  “Elsewhere, Jacob.” He smiled through bloody teeth. “Elsewhere.”

  “I don’t give warnings, Sloane. Where is she?”

  He shrugged. The Badge broke in the door. The wood splintered, and I stepped back. Sloane punched me on the inner thigh and I staggered all the way to the couch. Sloane ducked out. I fired another shot, catching him in the shoulder. He lurched into the street, yelling. The Badge looked back at their boss, just long enough for me to put holes in them.

  I went to the door. The cold iron carriage was there, the one I had seen earlier at Emily’s apartment. Marcus’s carriage, I realized. I looked back at his crumpled form. The Badge was forming up outside. There had to be a back door.

  As I left the room, I paused by Marcus’ metal form. I thought of the timeless suffering, the taste of brass and the tearing of my soul. There was a valve, sealed shut. I got a length of pipe out of the kitchen and tore it off. He rushed out like an exhausted wave on the beach, his spirit washing through the room in horror and relief. When he was gone, I took another shot out the open door, scattering the Badge, then went upstairs. There was a back balcony off the child’s room. I jumped to the next roof and ran.

  I KNEW IT was wrong before I got there. The sounds, the light. None of it was right. I almost turned back before I got there. I stood at the last corner, my hands and face resting on the cold stone for ten minutes. I kept hoping to hear something; Wilson complaining to himself, or working on some experiment. Anything.

  The cistern was torn up. This is what had happened, what had interrupted Sloane’s questioning. They didn’t need me to tell them where the Cog was. They had it. They came in here and got it. They had come in with guns, explosives. Stone fell from the ceiling, choking the water. Whatever secret outflow had swallowed the spring was blocked, and the cistern was rising. Dark water was pooling up over the rocky pier, flooding the floor of our hideaway.

  Wilson’s things floated in a half foot of water, tubes and shattered jars swirling in the new currents. Specimens, leaves and dead bugs clumped together like tiny islands. His delicate netting was torn and burned, hanging in charred tatters from the bullet-eaten walls. There was blood, smears, spatters, thin whirls in the water, drifting among Wilson’s abandoned wreckage.

  No bodies. Shell casings, one of Wilson’s cruel knives, broken and bright in the water. Emily’s shotgun was in a far corner, near the sunken tip of the pier. I waded out there, scooped it up and stared down into the deep water beyond.

  I stood there a long time, waiting for something to come out of that water, or for me to sink down into it. Nothing happened. I slung the soggy belt of the gun over my shoulder and went out. I had some questions for dear old dad.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gods Without Churches

  “BILLY,” I SAID.

  “Master Burn is not—”

  I punched him pretty hard. Harder than I meant, but better that than too light. He went down, his lip burst like a balloon. I stepped inside and closed the door.

  The foyer was empty, no sound but the half dozen clocks dad kept on display, each one a little out of step with all the others. I dragged Billy into the coat check, tied him as best I could with an old scarf that was lying in the corner, and locked the door.

  Cradling the shotgun in my hands, I started to search the rest of the house. I didn’t have any shells, but my father was a rational man. Even the threat of the gun would keep him in line.

  I didn’t find him, or anyone else for that matter. Mother lived with the kids, my sister and her officer gallant, upriver in their exciting new life as expatriates. My brothers were in the navy. The Academy wouldn’t take any more chances on the Burns. Father Burn lived here pretty much alone, him and Billy, a couple servants and the rare itinerant mistress. Most of the house was closed up. It looked like father was living mostly in the ballroom, sleeping in one of the private sitting rooms that clustered around the dance floor. How bad had things gotten?

  I went back to the foyer and opened the coat check. Billy was in the corner, free of the scarf, using it to mop blood off his face. He stared at me with narrow eyes.

  “What was it you were saying, Billy, before I interrupted?”

  “You’re a psychopath, Jacob,” he hissed. “Alexander was right, putting you out.”

  “I’m getting to that. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Now,” I cradled the shotgun in my arms. “What were you saying?”

  He looked down at his feet. His shoes were badly scarred, but well polished.

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Where is he, Billy?”

  “No. You’re going to kill him, too. You can…” he sobbed, a noble little kink in his voice. “You can do what you want with me, but I’m not going to let you kill him.”

  “I can just wait, Billy. I can sit here and lock the door and wait for him to come home. And I know he’s coming home eventually. My old man, there’s nowhere for him to go. Just tell me, Billy. I’m not going to hurt him, but there’re some things he and I need to talk out.”

  “You expect me to believe that? Look,” he wadded up the bloody scarf, held out his crimson hands. “Look at me. Look at what you’ve done. You’re a violent, horrible, ugly man. You’re just a godsdamn thug, Jacob. Just a violent, angry, broken man.”

  I stared at him. He was crying, but only in his eyes. The rest of him was stick straight and furious.

  “Tell me where he is. You have my word, Billy. And I’m sorry about your face.”

  He was trembling, the scarf knotted up between his fingers, fresh blood on his lip. His shirt was ruined, and I couldn’t imagine he had that many shirts, not working in this house.

  “Williamson,” I said. “Where’s my father?”

  “The Singer,” he whispered, tears anew in his eyes. “He’s at the Singer. Praying.”

  I nodded, then set Emily’s gun in the corner of the tiny room and went to the kitchen. I came back with wet towels and a bottle of dad’s better whiskey. The shotgun had been moved, bloody fingerprints on it. He probably picked it up, just long enough to see it wasn’t loaded. I’d never seen Billy use a gun, and I didn’t expect that to change today. I cleaned his face, made sure he drank three expensive fingers of the whiskey. He felt guilty about that, I could see, drinking the master’s bottle.

  “You won’t hurt him?” he asked.

  “And give him a way out? No.” I picked up the shotgun. “Thanks, Billy. Williamson. Get some ice on that lip.”

  “Billy’s fine,” he said. He followed me out, locking the door behind me.

  THE DOME OF the Singer sits on the edge of the river Ebd, on the far south side of Veridon. It’s seen better days, and most of those days were a decade ago. We kept one of our old gods here, one of the Celestes the original settlers found waiting for them in silent vigilance, hovering over the delta that would eventually become Veridon. That was from before the Church of the Algorithm, and their techno-spiritual dominance.

  There are five Celestes, or were the last time I checked. Used to be six, but the Watchman flickered and disappeared, twenty years ago. I barely remember that; my mother crying in a closet, my father drawing heavy curtains across the dining room window and burning secret, heavy candles that smelled like hot sand. My parents followed the old ways, at least in private.

  The door to the Dome was open, so I went in. The walls were thick, three feet of stone shot through with iron braces to hold it all together. The other Celestes had ceremonial houses, just places for worship and ritual. The Dome of the Singer was, at first, a practical matter. She sang, loudly. Or she used to. When I stepped into the cool dark interior of the Dome, all I heard were feet scuffing on stones and the low moan of breezes circulating through the drafty heights. She was silent, and I felt a chill.

  The main level of the Dome was a single open room. The floor was loosely fit stone, time-eroded and haphazardly level.
The walls were hung in the remnants of holy tapestries, framed in sconces that held cold torches. There was little light, at first just the illumination from the open door at my back.

  I walked inside. In time my eyes adjusted. There was other light, a bluish glow that descended from the second floor. A broad central staircase of wrought iron twisted up at the center of the room. It circled a patch of empty dirt like a screw ascending a pillar of air. The ceiling was thirty feet up, with a matching opening, about twenty feet wide, through which the staircase rose. The glow came down through that hole.

  Pausing at the bare patch in the floor, I looked up. I could see the shadowy smear of the Celeste eclipsing the smooth white ceiling of the Dome. She hung in empty space. I looked down at the bare dirt. One thing we’d learned about the Celestes; you couldn’t build under them. They exerted some kind of eroding force straight down. Any structure below them would wear away into this gritty gray sand in a matter of weeks. The flagstones near the sand’s perimeter were starting to show age, the corners crumbling like stale cheese under my feet.

  The staircase ran around the perimeter of this circular patch of god-eroded dirt, slowly ascending until it reached the second floor. The inner handrail was raw, pitted rust. I put a foot on the first step and listened to the metal complain.

  When I first entered, I remembered, I heard footsteps. They were still now. This level was empty, so whoever was here had to be upstairs. My father, hopefully. I sighed and started up. The staircase groaned and popped the whole way. Halfway up I swung the empty shotgun into my hands. It felt good, even though it was a threat I couldn’t follow through on.

  The higher I got, the brighter the Singer seemed. I kept my head bent and my shoulders turned, to keep her out of my direct field of vision. I needed to be able to see clearly. I was making enough noise that whoever was waiting up top would surely know I was coming.

  The staircase held up, and I made the second floor, crouching as I cleared the floor level. At first glance, the room was empty.

  There were prayer shrines against the curved outer wall of this level, six of them, one for each of the other Celestes, including the boarded up shrine of the dead Watchman. They were arranged so that the supplicants would face the appropriate dome elsewhere in the city. Two of these shrines were on my side, dark wood for the Warrior, iron and glass for the Mourning Bride. The Watchman’s shuttered shrine was there too, smeared in the wax drippings of the mourning candles. I turned to squint past the luminous form of the Singer.

  She hovered in the air at the center of the opening in the floor, surrounded by an iron railing. Her skin was pale against her bulbous, crimson robes. Her clothes were dark red and shiny, retaining form almost like a chitinous shell. Her eyes were closed. Her lips and the tips of her fingers were blood red and smooth. Light poured off her skin like mist on the river in winter. I had forgotten how beautiful she was, hidden away in this drafty stone building. How had we forgotten this, how had the city gone on to other gods?

  “Put the gun down, son.”

  He was just behind the Celeste, on the other side of the platform. Alexander was formally dressed, very sharp, a long black coat inlaid in crimson. He had one hand in the pocket of his coat, and with the other he pointed a revolver at me.

  “I’d rather keep it,” I said.

  He shrugged and flicked the pistol to his left. I came around the railing and walked toward him, the shotgun casually cradled in my arm.

  “Here alone?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You? All your friends waiting outside?”

  “I’m alone.”

  We both nodded thoughtfully. I looked up at the Singer and leaned against the rail.

  “She’s quiet,” I said.

  “Has been,” Alexander said, barely taking his eyes off me. “Three years now. Went from full volume to nothing in an hour.”

  “You were here?”

  He nodded. “We all were, all the Families.”

  “But you still come?”

  “Some of us.” He looked away, glanced at the shrine of the Noble, then back to me. “I still come, at least.”

  “There’s a story for you. Dead goddess, still worshipped by the dying Families of Veridon.” I smirked.

  He scowled at me and poked the revolver towards me.

  “Get rid of the shotgun.”

  “It’s not loaded,” I said.

  “So why carry it?”

  “Same reason you come here, I guess.” I smiled bitterly. He didn’t like that, but he dipped the revolver down.

  “So why are you here?” he asked.

  “Looking for you, I guess. Had a word with Billy. He says hi. I was at the Church of the Algorithm, earlier.” I turned to him. “Do you still carry an Icon of the Singer in your pocket when you go there?”

  He grimaced, ran a hand over the smooth pocket of his formal coat. “That’s not a chance I take anymore. Times are too difficult. Too little trust, these days.”

  “Yeah, I can bet. When did you stop?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Shortly after you left, I suppose.”

  “Were you carrying an Icon when you sold me to the Church, dad?”

  He froze, absolutely still.

  “That’s not—”

  “You sold me out, pop. Sold out everything I cared about.” I took a step forward, prompting the return of the pistol. “People died, Alexander. Friends of mine died. And for what? What did you get from those grease-fingered Wrights?”

  “Jacob, listen. I’m sorry you got involved in this, but—”

  I stabbed my finger at him, yelling. “You set me up. You knew why everyone was chasing me. You knew that this thing in my chest had something to do with the Cog. And you let me walk out of your house, easy as pie. What the hell?”

  The lines on his face were very deep, and his skin was gray. He looked tired.

  “Jacob, it’s… I’m sorry. It’s very complicated.”

  “Which part, dad? What’s so complicated? That you sold me to the Church? That you used me, my life, to curry favor with the Wrights? Is that it? That you abandoned me, treated me like it was all my fault, my failure, that led to my expulsion from the Academy? Is that what’s so godsdamn complicated?”

  I got too close, the old man stepped forward and swung the butt of his revolver in a short upper cut that landed on my chin. I fell back on my heels, then kept going until my head hit the floor. He stood over me, the pistol in my face, his shoulders shaking in rage.

  “Don’t try! Do not try to come to me with righteousness, Jacob Burn. I never meant to exile you from the family. You did that. You came home, boiling inside. Nothing could get to you, no one in the family. It killed your mother, drove her out of the house, out of the damn city! My wife left me, Jacob, because you drove her out. It almost killed me. I know you blame me, and maybe you should. But no one kicked you out of my house.”

  I lay there, looking up at him. Eventually he calmed down and let me stand up. He stood by the railing, looking peacefully at the Singer.

  “So, what?” I asked, wiping blood off my mouth. “You thought to sell my body to the Church, then coddle me in the Manor until I was ready to hatch?”

  He didn’t move. We were quiet for a while. I was about to ask again when he spoke.

  “I wasn’t sure. It was a chance, and I took it. I’m sorry it came out this way.”

  “Well. Me too,” I said after a moment’s silence. I picked up the shotgun and brushed off my pants. My jaw was throbbing, but after the events of the day I barely noticed.

  “So what is this thing, in my chest?”

  “Do you know what the Cog is? What it can do?”

  I nodded. “It’s a pattern. It’s what keeps that Angel together. That’s why he’s trying to get it back, before he loses control.”

  “Oh. It’s more than that.” He gripped the railing, squeezed it and let out a long sigh. “Look, this is going to be hard to believe, but the legend, the one about the girl? Camilla? That’s tr
ue.”

  “Yeah. We’ve met.”

  “You’ve… met.” He looked at me tiredly. “Yes, I suppose that’s the sort of impossible thing that would happen to a man like you. So you know. The zepliners, the cogwork… all of it is just derived knowledge. Technology that we’ve sifted from her dissected heart.”

  “She has some thoughts on that. You know the map came from her, right?”

  “I had my suspicions. And my concerns, about her motives in doing so. But,” he glanced around the room, at the various shrines. “But people in the Council wanted to move forward. Too great an opportunity.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “So, yes. The thing in your heart. It’s kind of a reader, I suppose. A translator. It’s very good at implying and imposing the holy patterns of the Algorithm.”

  “You sound like a Wright. The Church let something like this out of their care?”

  “It required a living body. The Wrights won’t take modification of any kind. They could have put it in anyone, but they needed someone they could trust.”

  “And they chose you?” I asked. “Last supplicant of the Celestes?”

  “Trust might not be the best word. They needed someone they could control.”

  “Ah. Desperation begets control. Of course.”

  He sighed. “Of course.”

  “Kind of irresponsible. Hiding this artifact in me and then letting me run off to the gutters.”

  “We had our eyes, close to you.”

  “Who? Valentine? I can’t imagine him working for you.”

  He shook his head, still not looking at me.

  “Who then?” I stepped close to him, one hand on the railing. The pale light of the Singer made my father look frozen in place, in time. He almost looked noble. “Who were you paying to be my friend?”

  He grimaced and looked at me, his eyes sad and hollow.

  “Emily.”

  I gripped the railing and the shotgun. The trigger creaked under my grip.