Heart of Veridon

by Tim Akers

  “Bullshit. Emily’s a friend, a…” my voice stumbled “…we’re close.”

  “Yes. That was the job description.”

  I punched him, weakly, my fist glancing off the sagging fat of his jaw. He hardly moved, just leaned away from me, then batted my arm down.

  “You’re a fucking liar, Alexander Burn! It’s not possible, Emily would never, she couldn’t. She could never do that to me. You’re just a damn liar.”

  “Yes, I am. The Church required it. There was always a chance you’d go off on your own, stray from the desired path. We set it up, before, to make sure you would take to her.”

  I slumped against the railing. Her shotgun clattered to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, son. It had to be like this.”

  “No. It didn’t. Nothing does.” I braced myself, trying to find a place in my mind to fit Emily the spy, the traitor. “Who knew?”

  “The Council. Elements in the Church.”

  “Tomb?”

  “Angela was her handler. That’s how we knew the Cog was in the city, finally, once we lost contact with Marcus.”

  I put both hands on the railing and looked down. The sand below was smooth and blank. “What am I supposed to do,” I asked, more to myself.

  “What can you do? You have the Cog, and your heart.” He turned from me, looking at the Singer. “You can do pretty much anything you want.”

  “I don’t have the Cog,” I said numbly.

  “What? How could you… who has it?”

  “Sloane. I think. He tracked it down, stole it. I think he killed a friend of mine.”

  “Jacob, you can’t mean that. We can’t let them have control of that thing. If it gets back to the Angel—”

  “Why would it be any safer from the Angel with me? I haven’t done a great job of protecting the things I care about, recently.”

  “They’ve… for fuck’s sake, Jacob. Sloane and his people are negotiating with the Angel. They’re offering him some kind of sacrifice.”

  “A deal? But what can he offer them?”

  “They’ll think of something,” he said bitterly, then hunched over the railing and closed his eyes.

  “If she’s your agent, do you know where Emily is now? Sloane took her, said he had special plans for her.”

  He nodded, slowly. “We know.”

  “What? What are they going to do with her?”

  “Jacob,” he said carefully, “The Angel can’t hold together, not without that Cog. And they aren’t going to offer him that. But a body, specially modified for the purpose—”

  “Emily! They’re going to give Emily to the Angel? But, can she survive that? Why would they pick her?”

  “Something happened to her, I think. Our sources indicate that there was some kind of surgery, before Sloane got a hold of her. Makes her an ideal candidate.”

  “Camilla. Gods, I’ll bet she knew. I’ll bet that little bitch thought to use her to get out. Godsfuck.”

  “Whatever it was, they have her.”

  “Where is she?” I asked again. I turned toward him and staggered forward. “You know. I can tell, you know.”

  He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. He was measuring me, weighing his options, my possible reaction.

  “I can’t tell you, Jacob,” he said, finally, sadly.

  “I’ll find out. You know I will.”

  “Not from me.”

  “Then in spite of you.”

  He nodded slowly, but didn’t move. “Forget her, Jacob. Don’t go rushing in...”

  “To get her. To get captured,” I snarled at him and poked the air in front of his face. “That's what you're afraid of, isn’t it?”

  He flinched, then flexed his fingers around the pistol grip. “Perhaps.”

  “Which is why you told me. That’s why you flipped your card. If I knew she didn’t love me, that the last five years have been staged and she was your little spy, you thought… you thought I would abandon her.”

  He didn’t look at me.

  “I don’t want you to waste yourself on her.” He spoke quietly, as he spoke to me when I was a child. “They have her, yes. They’re using her as a lure. Think about it, Jacob. They’ll get you, and then they’ll have everything.”

  I watched him, stared at him, his pale, noble face watching the motionless Singer.

  “We don’t understand each other, father. If that’s what you thought, that I’d abandon her.”

  “You can’t save her.”

  “So what? I can try.” I turned angrily from him and snatched up the shotgun. “I can fucking try.”

  His shoulders sagged, and he closed his eyes.

  “Actually, Jacob, your father understands you quite well.”

  I turned. Angela Tomb stepped out of the shrine of the Noble, along with three of her Housies. Wood clattered. Guards emerged from all the shrines, shortrifles in hand.

  “He wanted a chance to dissuade you,” she said. Her voice was cold and numb. “He had it.”

  “It was a lie, then? About Emily?” I asked as I twisted my hands on the empty shotgun.

  “It was not,” Alexander said without opening his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re all sorry, Jacob,” Angela said. “But we really can’t let them get you.”

  “You’ve said that before, Ange. You’re going to shoot me again?”

  “Someone here will, if needs must.” She grimaced. “We’re all packing Bane this time, Jacob. Don’t make it happen.”

  “You can stop them,” I said. “You can go to them and stop them.”

  “We can’t,” father said. “We’re sorry. There’s too much at stake.”

  “Let us handle this our own way, Jacob. Let us negotiate. If they have the Cog, and we have you… terms came be made.”

  “Not good enough,” I said. “You’re going to let this happen, Alexander?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I backed up until the railing was against my legs, the quiet goddess at my back. I raised my empty gun.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her Eyes Were Open

  “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.

  Wils
on. 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 belie
ve 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.”