“Who—” the archer said, scrambling away.
“I remember you!” Gurond screamed. Even upside-down, he smashed his arms and legs against the wall. The stone cracked and shuddered at the impact. “I remember you’re a goddamned mage!”
He smashed the wall again and again, and a horrifying sound filled the room. Once more, Gurond kicked, and with that he came free.
As did the roof of the chamber.
Huge slabs of rock came plummeting down. Dayne did the only thing he could think to do: put his body over the archer, holding up his shield while tons of stone fell on them.
Chapter 13
ASTI EXPECTED TROUBLE. THE HAIRS on the back of his neck were up, the danger was in his nose. He knew that whoever had taken Tarvis and who even knew how many other children were evil bastards. Following that Delmin kid down this tunnel, he was certain he was dealing with nefarious people, a depravity deeper than he had suspected.
The metallic tracks were imbedded into the passage floor, and steam pipes along the ceiling. He and Verci had been tracking the people behind the Andrendon Project, the people who had burned down their home and shop to claim the land on Holver Alley, and he believed what was being built beneath the Firewing house had been a part of that.
But this, whatever it was, was something else altogether. He knew these tunnels went deeper and farther than anyone in Maradaine suspected, and perhaps the Andrendon folks were just a front for whatever was going on here.
The tunnel suddenly dropped out, revealing a wide chamber below. This room had machinery—no, a machine, an enormous one with several pieces. Verci had told him about the death machine on the Parliament floor, and this put Asti in that same mind. Titanic and dark in purpose. The metal lines and the pipes fed toward it.
Whatever it was, it was quiet for now. Asti shuddered to think what it would do when fired up.
The kid had scrambled down to the machine floor, sputtering and swearing.
“Kid!” Asti wasn’t sure if it was safe to shout, and tried to yell and whisper at the same time. He didn’t see anyone else here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be heard. “What the blazes are you doing?”
“What are they doing?” the kid said, looking up to Asti. “I mean, it boggles me.”
“They?” Asti wished he had brought a rope instead of just knives. Not that he couldn’t get down there easily enough. Getting back out would be harder. Getting out with folks after them, near impossible. Even still, he started to work his way down.
“Whoever built this,” Delmin said. “I mean, it’s fascinating. The way the numina swirls and pools, and then is drawn up through the big statue, redirected through the little ones, and then is sucked into the spikes.”
“Statues?” Asti asked, having reached the floor. He looked up at the machine and saw. “Great rutting saints.”
There were eight statues, all green jade: the one in the center of the machine, at least the size of a man, and the ones around the perimeter, each only a foot tall.
Asti had seen one of those small ones. Liora Rand had taken it out of Lord Henterman’s lockbox. And the large one, that had to be the one they had stolen in that first gig after the fire.
“What the rutting blazes is this?” he asked.
“I wish I knew,” Delmin said, coming back over to Asti. “I . . . I had fed just a hair of numina into it, well, a centibarin, if we’re being specific, which was not enough to actually activate it—thank Saint Marian—but enough for me to see how it all flows and pools.”
“What would activating it do?” Asti asked.
“Nothing good,” Delmin said. “I mean, there’s parts that have nothing to do with the numinic flow at all—those copper cages, the gear work, and those pipes?”
“Steam pipes,” Asti said. “Verci could explain it better, but if there’s a water source and a firebox, you can push steam through the pipes, and use that to push parts of the machinery.” He went over to one of the copper cages and gently pushed it. It was on some sort of moving gimbal. Perhaps when fired up, those parts would all spin. But why?
“That might explain why here, Mister Rynax,” the kid said. He knelt on the ground, placing his palm on the stone. “Feel that.”
Asti did. It was hot. “What’s going on?”
“Parts of the city are over natural hot springs. That was why the Kieran Empire built the city here over two thousand years ago, for the hot baths.”
“Why do you know that?”
“I study history,” Delmin said. “The bathhouses on the University grounds are fed from those same hot springs, as are a few others around town.”
Asti remembered the one Verci liked to go to, at Larton’s Bath and Shave. “So that’s the same heat?”
“A natural source,” Delmin said. “The rest, I can’t even fully fathom. But I noticed—it’s incomplete.”
“How?”
Delmin pointed to one section. “There should be another spike and statue here. The numina is bouncing and pooling in these perfect geometric shapes everywhere except this spot. Here it just becomes a mess.”
“So that means—”
Delmin’s voice grew agitated. “It means whoever built this knows what they’re doing and they—”
Asti grabbed him and covered his mouth. He heard something down one of the other hallways, coming from the east. Delmin protested, but Asti dragged him through another doorway on the north side.
“Quiet!” Asti told him. “Someone’s here.”
Delmin nodded. He looked like he got it, and Asti released his mouth.
“Maybe they’re coming to finish the machine,” Delmin whispered.
“Let’s see what’s happening,” Asti said. He peered out of the doorway. A thin, damp man with stringy black hair came into the machine chamber, flanked by a cadre of beasts.
That was the only way to describe them. Almost a dozen, all of them inhuman in their own ways. Skin unnatural colors. Limbs of every size.
“Saints almighty,” Delmin said. “That’s a mage. A potent one.”
“You can sense that?”
“Like I can see you,” Delmin said. He stumbled away and vomited in the corner of the room.
Asti couldn’t blame the kid. He was of half a mind to do that himself. The last thing he wanted to do was tussle with a mage and a squad of horrors.
“Stay quiet,” Asti said. “I’m going to look for another way out.”
“How?”
Asti shook his head. “Best I reckon, we’re under Saint Bridget’s Square. The church should be over there. They’ve got cellars, maybe it connects.”
“I should—”
“Kid, it might be that the only way out is the way we came in,” Asti said. “You say you’re a mage, so ready yourself to get us back up to that tunnel. You hear?”
He nodded.
Asti followed down the hallway—and it was a hallway. The machine chamber and the tunnel from under the mage house, that had been rough-cut stone. This was more like Josie’s passages. Properly built, with real walls and doors. Asti cautiously checked a few of the doors. Empty sleeping cells. Looked like no one was using this place. But dead ends.
Asti checked another door. Empty again.
But not without sound. Crying. Moaning.
Children.
A quick scan of the room showed where that was coming from. A ventilation shaft at the top of the wall. So the kids were somewhere on the other side.
Asti went back to the hallway, seeking the best way to reach to the kids. If he could find them, find a way up to the surface from here, then that would make all this worth the trouble. He went around the next corner, spotting a grand doorway. Drawing out two knives, he pushed the door open. If the kids were here, and he was going to have to fight to save them, so be it.
There were no children.
Instead it was far more disturbing. The room held ten glass cases, in a circle. Sarcophagi. Four of them were occupied by sleeping women. Sleeping, pregnant women.
“What in—”
Hands grabbed his head. Liora Rand’s face appeared right in front of him.
“You cannot be here!” she said.
He knew she was a figment of his broken mind, but by Saint Senea, she felt real. He could smell her.
“Get out, get out, you stupid man,” she snarled at him. “You can’t see this.”
She pushed him away, and he swiped at her with his knife.
He swung at open air.
“Asti!” Delmin was lumbering over to him. “Did you find a way out? Are you all right?”
“I—what just happened?” Asti asked. He was standing in the middle of the hallway.
“You were just stabbing . . . nothing.”
“I saw—she . . .” Where had he just been? He had heard something, or . . . seen . . . an image of something troubling was just on the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t reach it. No, he had just been searching the hallway, and found nothing peculiar at all.
“Did you find a way out?”
“No,” Asti said. Dead end sleeping cells. That’s all there was. That was all he had found, he was certain.
Wasn’t he? He looked back down the hallway, as if he expected to see something else. Had there been another door? No, of course not. Nothing, nothing at all, no need to look again.
“Then we need to get out,” Delmin said. “I don’t know what that machine does, but I do know that mage is building up numina to do something, and I don’t want to be here when that happens.”
The examinarians came, the bodies taken, the rooms searched, but no revelations that made everything suddenly make sense. Satrine had hoped these fellows, who chose death over arrest, had some sort of journal or ledger or something she could read through and understand it all. But there was nothing.
Nothing except the trapmaster, who had slipped off into the crowd. She didn’t even really think he was a part of this, or knew anything. She knew he lived near this part of town; he might well have been just another gawker. She might be putting more weight on his presence just because this whole thing spooked her, and she was trying—needing—to find some sense out of the chaos.
But then she remembered how Sister Myriem had pointed her toward him, exactly when Satrine needed to find him. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Unless it was, and she was convincing herself that a random hunch meant . . . what? A greater power helping her? Her prayers were being answered in the form of an angry girl in a cloistress dress?
“There are better prayers you could answer, Saint Marguerine,” she said to herself as she stepped out of the apartment into the dusky twilight of the Keller Cove streets.
“What now?” Kellman asked her.
“Just talking to myself,” she said. “Sorry this was a waste of time.”
“I’d hardly call it that,” Kellman said. “I mean, these were three sick bastards who clearly were going up to terrible business. We’re definitely better off with them gone.”
“No argument on that,” she said. “But we still don’t know what they stole, why they stole it, or who they were with. Because whatever the blazes this was, they were part of something bigger.”
“The Brotherhood,” Kellman said, frowning. “I remember hearing that once before, can’t remember where.”
“Think on that, it might matter,” she said. It was well after sign-out time, and she was overdue at home. She waved over a page. “Go run to Inemar, sign-out for Inspector Rainey for the night. You too, Kellman?”
“Nah, I’ve got the dark watch tonight,” he said. “I’ll head back and see if I can find that Brotherhood thing in my notes.”
He went off with the page.
Satrine should go home, she knew that. But there was an itch she needed to scratch: check in on Minox. In all his unresolved cases, he might have heard something about this Brotherhood. Plus, she was curious what happened in his day investigating as a civilian.
The Welling house was only a few blocks away, after all.
She walked cautiously to the house, not sure how she would be received. It’s not like the other Wellings were particularly fond of her. But even still, she walked up to the door and knocked.
A woman of middle years opened the door, shook her head, and closed it again. Satrine started down the steps when it opened again, and a young man in Constabulary uniform with lieutenant stripes came out.
“Inspector Rainey?” he asked. “Are you here in a professional capacity?”
“Not entirely,” she said. “I had hoped for a word with Minox.”
“He’s not available,” the young lieutenant said.
“You’re Oren, his brother, right?”
“That’s right. I came out here when no one else wanted to, on the off chance that you actually had official cause to come here. Since you do not, I’ll tell you to walk off. You knock on our door again without a writ in hand, you’ll be met with crossbows.”
“Now just a damn—”
His hand snapped in front of her face, his pointing finger just inches from her eye. “My sister left here on her last ride with you, Missus Rainey. You didn’t even have the decency to bring her body home.”
“I . . . I’m sorry.”
“Imagine how little I care,” he said, going back inside and closing the door. Satrine turned around and made her way back to the street.
“Inspector! Here!”
She turned to see a wild-looking fellow, peering around the side of the house. He gestured for her to come closer. Cautiously she approached.
“Yes?”
“Inspector Rainey,” he said, smiling a blackened-tooth smile. His hairy face looked beyond sickly, with his beard matted down with sweat. “Sorry, I . . . I’m not fit for company, I . . . Evoy Serrick. South Maradaine Gazette. Or, you know, I was. They don’t have me in their employ anymore.”
“Evoy?” she asked. Minox had mentioned his cousin Evoy in passing, usually in the context of a person to be pitied. She could see why. But also with a certain fondness. Minox would collect newsprints around the city for him. “Can I help you?”
“Minox didn’t come home yet. He . . . I told him not to go alone, I did. I’m pretty sure he went with someone. But not home yet.”
“I’m sure he’ll be all right.”
“I’m not,” Evoy said, shaking his head. “I mean, a few months ago—the first case with you. You saved him from that Plum fellow. You remember?”
“I do,” she said.
“He wrote me a note. I have plenty of my own notes, I read everything in this city, and I read between the lines, but there is not one newssheet that mentions the Brotherhood of the Nine.”
That got her attention.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know, but Minox knew. Knew they were connected to Plum. To his eight pins. And the pins led to his hand, and he went to the Blue Hand, and the Blue Hand faced the Thorn. And you met the Thorn. But I don’t think the Thorn is there for Minox, so who would he ask for help? I don’t even know.”
“Slow down,” Satrine said. “Who is the Brotherhood?”
“Whispers beneath us,” he said. He knelt down and pressed his ear to the ground. “Maybe right beneath us. But also rotting through the city. Touching everything. The children, the robberies, the election, the scandal, it’s all the Brotherhood. They are here, and Minox cannot stop them alone.”
“He’s not alone,” she said. “I’m with him in all of this.”
“Right, right,” he said. “Be vigilant tonight, Inspector. Something is moving, and I feel it in my bones. I think he’s going to need you before the night is done.”
She nodded. “Jace isn’t home yet, is he?” If anyone in th
e Welling house still had any kind thoughts for her, it was him.
“Jace?” He looked confused. “No, no, I . . . there’s too many of them in there for me to track their coming and going. I don’t . . . I don’t go in there anymore. Not in the house.”
“If Minox doesn’t come home, let Jace know to tell me.”
“I . . . no, I don’t go in there. Don’t talk to any of them. Just Minox. Maybe Ferah. But, no, just Minox. Only he understands.”
“This is for Minox,” she said.
“No, no,” Evoy said. He started looking up at the night sky. “I should have . . . I should have learned the moons and the stars. They’re probably . . . knowing that would help. I wonder if I have an almanac. I think I do. I think I do.” He wandered to the barn behind the house, closing himself in.
Satrine sighed. At least she knew that Minox was aware of the Brotherhood, and hopefully he would know more. She would have to believe he knew what he was doing. She needed to get home, see her girls, check in on Loren. Tomorrow she would work on this more.
The sound of falling rocks had stopped, and Gurond’s mad howls had faded into the distance. For a momentary eternity, there was nothing but darkness and silence in the hot, close crush of stone.
“So, I didn’t catch your name.”
“What?” Dayne asked. He could barely make sense of anything, save the terror clutching his heart, and the pain in his arms, bracing his body and the shield, keeping the ceiling from crushing their skulls.
A soft red glow formed in front of Dayne, showing the young man—the archer. What had Gurond called him? Thorn? Why was that familiar? Something Hemmit and the rest had written?
Hemmit. He was nearby. Hopefully not also caught in the collapse.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he said. “I mean, I’ve never been quite this intimate with someone without first exchanging names.”
“Intimate?” Dayne asked. “We’ve been caved in.”
People of the City Page 20
