Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle)

by Tim Akers

  “Not today. Considering the situation.”

  “Maybe tell her, anyway. Someone who knows something about the little problem she had up on the Heights.”

  “That some kind of code?” he asked.

  “Nah. But she’ll let us in.”

  He grimaced, then nodded to someone behind the gate. A page ran up, got the message from the guard, and ran off again. We all stood around smiling nervously and peering out into the street while we waited. When the page came back there was another guard with him.

  “He’s in,” the page said, out of breath. He poked his finger at Wilson. “That one stays outside.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.” I turned to Wilson. “You’ll just have to stay here and…”

  Wilson, still smiling, leaned close to me.

  “If you leave me here I will climb the walls and find you,” he hissed. “I will kill every man, child and widow’s dog that gets in my way. And when I find my way to your bitch-Councilor’s side, I will wrap her in gum and vomit fly eggs down her throat.”

  When he was done he leaned away from me again, slowly, keeping his eyes on mine but smiling all the while. I turned to the guards.

  “It’s best if he comes with me.”

  “Lady said—”

  “Angela will understand. Honestly, everyone will be a lot better off if he comes with me.”

  They inched back a little. The messenger shrugged, and the watch captain nodded.

  “It’s on your head if he causes any trouble,” the captain said to me.

  “Sure, sure.”

  The other guard unlocked the gate and let me in, then locked it again from the inside. The guys outside showed no sign of having keys.

  “They leaving you out in the cold?” I asked the OverGuard. He shrugged, then put his back to the gate and stared out into the stables.

  “Come on,” the new guard said. He was a lot cleaner, his uniform fit too well. He probably didn’t like being near the gates at all. I nodded and followed him into the manor. Once we were away from the gate I shot Wilson a look. He shrugged and stopped smiling.

  “You aren’t leaving me behind in this, Jacob.”

  “I see that. But there’s no need to threaten.”

  “Threat is a language you seem to understand.” He shot his cuffs and rearranged the knives hidden in his coat. “But there’s no reason we can’t work together in this.”

  “If you say.”

  There were a lot more Housies inside, more than I expected. Maybe that riot story was true. They hadn’t even bothered to disarm me when I came through, either. I fingered the revolver at my belt and looked around. The house was quiet.

  She met us in the dining room. The long table was clear, the phalanx of chairs tipped against it. The only other furniture was an empty china cabinet.

  Angela was standing by the window, looking out over one of the pocket gardens that spotted the grounds. She wore a riding jacket and pants in deep maroon. The guard left us and closed the door. I motioned Wilson to one side, a step behind me. Maybe if Angela thought he was some sort of servant she would ignore him.

  “Angela,” I said.

  “I thought it might be you.” She had her arms crossed, and didn’t turn. “When Harold said it was someone with news from the Heights. I thought it must be you.”

  “I was hoping we could talk about that,” I said. I crossed to the table. “There are a lot of strange things going on. Maybe we can, I don’t know, clarify some things.”

  She nodded, almost absentmindedly.

  “You were able to get through the Badge?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Came around the back.”

  “No officers that way?”

  “Some. They’re hiding, but they’re there.”

  She nodded again, then scratched at her cheek and looked at me. She paused when she saw Wilson, raised her eyebrows and looked at me questioningly.

  “A friend,” I said.

  “Well. Friends are good,” she said. She sighed, and it sounded like she was enormously tired, like a child about to fall asleep after a long summer day. It reminded me of the younger Angela, the girl I’d known. It was hard to see, in these clothes, in this place. Hard to remember we’d been children together.

  “What about the Heights?” she asked. She motioned to the empty table, then walked over and tipped a chair onto its legs. She sat. “What did you want to talk about?”

  I took a chair across from her, keeping my hands on the table. Wilson went to the window and pretended to ignore us. “I’ve had a pretty active couple of days, Angela.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure. But I thought you were used to that. The stories I’ve heard, you lead a pretty active life.”

  “Stories.” I shrugged. “It’s been more interesting than usual. A lot of the things that I know about how this city works,” I spread my hands, palms up. “Haven’t been working. The Badge has been very… persistent.”

  “That’s unusual? The Badge enforcing the law?”

  “One of Valentine’s men was rolling my room when I got back from your little party. Insisted it wasn’t at the boss’s behest, and later that day the old clockwork told me he couldn’t get involved. Didn’t want me in his gang until this was all straightened out.”

  “Until what was all straightened out?” She leaned forward, touched the table with her elbows. She seemed to be hovering, just off the wood.

  “There are some names I want to ask you about, Angela. Some people I’ve met, if briefly. Tell me if they’re familiar to you.”

  She was very still, watching me. She didn’t say anything. I took the paper I had gotten from Calvin out of my pocket and lay it on the table between us. She took it, unfolded it, looked at it for a solid minute without speaking. Then she folded it back up and set it on the table again. She sighed.

  “Where did you find that?” she asked.

  “Friends. Part of my interesting life. Now, I know some of those people. I killed at least one of them, and I’ve seen the body of another. And a third I met at your party. Who are these people, Angela?”

  “Wellons,” she said. “Is he the one you killed?”

  “No. But I saw him, sure enough. In your house. Sloane, too. But it’s Marcus I killed, on the Glory of Day. And he gave me something.”

  “A dirty conscience?”

  I smiled. “You know what he gave me, Angela.”

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She stood and crossed to the china cabinet, ran a finger down across the wood inlay.

  “Let’s say that I do,” she finally relented. “What does it have to do with what happened up on the Heights?”

  “You saw that thing, Angela. Everyone there did. What are they paying those officers to keep quiet? An Angel, ransacking the Manor Tomb? That can’t be good for your reputation.”

  “They’re all good boys, Jacob. Good citizens. They know what to keep quiet.”

  “But someone will talk. They’ll get drunk, and they’ll talk. And what are they going to say? They saw an Angel. The myths are real. There’s an Angel in Veridon, Angela.”

  “What are you doing here, Jacob? There are people trying to pin you for the death of those Guildsmen, you know. And the Summer Girl. And Register Prescott.”

  “You know I didn’t kill them.”

  “I know you didn’t kill all of them,” she said quietly. She turned to me. Her eyes were worried. “What’s the Angel doing, Jacob. What did it say to you?”

  “It was after something, Angela. Something it thought I had. And so was Pedr, and so is the Badge. Something they all think I have. And I’m hoping you can help me with that, Angela, because we both know I don’t have it.”

  “Say we do, whatever it is.” She turned again, refused to look at me. “What’s that matter to me?”

  “You know I don’t have it. You’re on the Council. Council holds the reins of the Badge. Call them off.”

  She leaned against the cabinet and crossed her arms thoughtfully.

&
nbsp; “The Council is a complicated place. Maybe the seats pushing the Badge around right now don’t have the whole picture.”

  “You’re saying you don’t have a handle on the army outside your door?”

  “It’s an interesting question,” she said. She crossed over to the window, looked out over the grounds. You could see the rooftops of the surrounding district, poking out over the wall like distant mountaintops made of shingle and soot. “What they think they know and what they actually know. An interesting question. But let’s crack to the marrow here, Jacob.”

  She went back to the cabinet and slid one of the drawers open. There was a lot of business, sliding things around, fussing with fabrics; then she came over and placed the Cog on the table. It whirled like a hurricane, the inner wheels buzzing in near silent period.

  “You have it,” I said. I knew she probably did. “So why are they still chasing me?”

  “Because this is just a part, Jacob.” Her voice was fragile. I looked up. She held a pistol, a small, ornate piece, its barrel drawing a line to my eye. “Now, slowly, let’s have that piece up on the table. Very. Slowly. And your friend shouldn’t move. For his own sake.”

  I complied. Wilson had stiffened at the window, looking sternly at the two of us. Soon as my pistol was on the table, half a dozen Housies came into the room. Harold was there, looking at me with a disapproving eye. He smiled at me tightly. The old guy had a new scar across his face, and it pinched his cheek when he smiled.

  “Not what I was expecting,” I said. “Not exactly.”

  “Like you said, Jacob. Strange days.” She leaned her head to Harold. “Let’s get this all out of sight. We’ll have to wait until the Badge gets out of the way before we can act.”

  “There is the postern gate, ma’am,” he said. “The carriage could be—”

  “They’re out there,” I said.

  “Yes, Jacob was good enough to come in that way. They’re hiding around the—”

  “No,” I said. I nodded to the pocket garden out the window. “They’re out there.”

  Everyone turned. A half dozen Badge were scrambling over the hedge wall, shortrifles in hand. They spotted us and raised their weapons. A bullet splintered the window, then there was a fusillade of return fire. The glass fell like a waterfall. I threw myself to the floor.

  “Harold! Hold the room!” Angela shrieked. “Jacob, you will come with me. There are depths they wouldn’t dare breach.”

  The door behind us cracked with gunfire, wood splintering under incoming fire from the hallway. The Badge had gained the house, it seemed.

  “M’Lady, perhaps now is the time for negotiation,” Harold said. Angela spat angrily, wrenched the man’s pistol from his hand and fired out the window.

  “Like that, you sot!” She crushed the weapon back into his hands and then looked at me. “Come on.”

  Angela swooped by the table, picked up the Cog and then, ignoring the increasingly frantic skirmish around her, levered open a concealed door in the wood panel wall. She disappeared. Shooting a glance at Harold, who was paying desperate attention to the reloading and aiming of his weapon, I slid my revolver off the table and into a pocket. I lost track of Wilson, turned just in time to see him go into the corridor. No one stopped me, so I followed them through the secret door, hoping Wilson didn’t do something rash before I caught up to them.

  The corridor was a small space, wooden walls that quickly gave way to unfinished stone. I put a hand on Wilson’s shoulder as soon as I could. He had the knives out, but gave me a nervous look then let me go ahead. Angela was only a little ways ahead, hurrying through the semi-darkness. We passed various listening holes as we went, placed to spy on the house in secret. There was fighting throughout the manor. I smelled smoke once, but it passed, and I didn’t say anything. Angela must surely have noticed.

  “I didn’t want it to be like this, I swear. By the Celestes, I swear,” Angela whispered. “Not my intent at all. You’ve armed yourself again, I assume.”

  I took the revolver from my coat and cocked the hammer in response. She nodded without looking around.

  “Good. May need it. You trust your friend, there? Is he good with those stickers?”

  “Good enough, ma’am. As soon as I figure out who to poke.”

  She laughed, not a trace of nervousness or fear in her voice. “I never expected them to make such a vulgar play.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  She paused at a branch in the passage, considering our path. One way led down, the other up. She looked nervously down, then behind us, over my shoulder. I could hear feet, far behind.

  “Can’t risk that,” she said. “Some things can’t be put into play.”

  We went up.

  “Who’s doing this, Angela? You said someone in the Council was pushing the Badge around. Who is it?” I imagined these things happening at the Manor Burn, my family hiding in the walls, my father arming the manservants and bolting the doors. “This is practically war.”

  “It does seem a bit much,” Angela said. We were moving quickly up a tight spiral staircase. We passed through another hidden door and were again in the common hallways of the house. The floors here were dusty, but there were windows and sunlight. The fighting below had quieted, but there were still Badge outside. “I may press a formal complaint in the Chamber.”

  She led us to another stairway, another spiral that went up, this one hung in tapestries. We were running now. There was no question of making a stand. We were just trying to find a place to hide. We ended up on a balcony, a tiny cupola that overlooked the estate grounds. Badge were crawling over the grounds, tramping through gardens and kicking in doors. Angela motioned us down behind the railing. Wilson peeked his head over, as though measuring distances and heights.

  “If we’re quiet, and lucky, we’ll escape notice. This is a unilateral action, Jacob, what the Badge is doing. Someone is acting without orders, or with secret orders. I don’t know who, exactly. But it’s only a matter of time before the actual authority reasserts itself, and they pull back. We’ve just got to—”

  A bullet whizzed off the stone rail by Angela’s head. On another cupola, lower, an officer stood with a rifle. He was pointing at us and yelling to the courtyard below. There were already feet on the stairs behind us, hammering closer.

  “I don’t think quiet’s going to be enough, Angela. We’re going to need to secure the door and—”

  A loud shot, and fire filled my chest. I looked down to see my shirt blackened with powder. The blood started, hot across my ribs.

  Angela turned her pistol to Wilson, holding it steadily at his head. “I’m sorry, Jacob. I can’t let them have it all. If not us, if not the Founders; well, then no one.”

  “Yeah,” I choked. I could feel the bullet, grinding against the machine of my PilotEngine. Or whatever it was, whatever secret thing lived in my chest. She probably expected to kill me with that shot. It’s what I expected. “Yeah, sorry.”

  I slapped the pistol aside and punched her. She fell in a heap, the Cog falling and rolling to my boot. I picked it up. Darkness was filling my head, an icy void that reached up from my chest to my eyes. I stumbled. Wilson put a hand under my arm. He was clearly torn between holding me up and slitting Angela’s throat.

  Blood and the cycle of my heart pounded through my skull. I put one hand on the railing and pulled myself up. In the courtyard below, the little gray officers of the Badge had slowed down. The one with the rifle was still in his cupola, still looking at me. He was shouting, but the noise came through as a soft roar. I remembered the feet on the stairs and lurched to close the door. The lock was simple, but it took my clumsy hands long heartbeats to secure it. I leaned against the old wood. The Cog had slipped from my hand. I bent down to get it again and when I stood a shadow was passing over me.

  The Angel. Twenty, thirty feet from the balcony, flying in lazy circles. Wilson was staring at him, his long face slack with shock. I raised my pistol and fired. The
bullet went into him, drawing a contemptuous scowl. I fired again, again, the heat going out of my hand, my arm turning into river clay. He watched me, waiting. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. I leaned against the railing and looked down. Long way down. Wilson was standing between us, both knives out. I put a tired knee on the railing and started to lift myself over.

  The door behind me opened, the lock popping with barely a fight. Badgemen, their shortrifles glossy black in the sun. They looked at Angela, blood leaking from her lips, then at me. I made ready to jump. Wilson was a clever climber, right? He’d make sure I got down safely. Right?

  The Angel hit me, hard, screaming. Bullets ripped past me as the Badgemen fired in blind panic. Hot lines traced across my chest, then I rolled to my feet. Wilson was dragging at my sleeve, blood across his face, one knife sheathed and the other dripping metal blood. The Badge had fallen on the Angel. He stood and shrugged them off in bloody majesty. Wilson and I jumped for the door and stumbled down the stairs in a dizzying array of thin arms and fainting legs. He followed, awkwardly, his wings tearing at the tight walls.

  I followed our path back, found the secret door Angela had brought us through. My head was hammering with the grinding tear of my heart. Blood was leaking from my chest, mixed with the oily gunk of my secondary blood. I started coughing and couldn’t stop. Wilson put an arm around me, carried me down. I stumbled to the floor of the secret passage and vomited while Wilson paced nervously around me. He was talking, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Eventually I stood up and continued on. I smelled more smoke, but that might have been me. My mouth tasted like ash. Wilson kept looking at me nervously, moving ahead of me down the corridor, then coming back to make sure I was still moving. Twice we passed dead bodies, Badgemen who had been cut by Wilson’s knife. I no longer heard the angel behind us.

  Wilson stopped us at the corridor where Angela had paused. He propped me against the wall and bent to my chest, poking and frowning. Actual smoke was coming up out of the metal of my heart, leaking in oily plumes out of my mouth.

  “You’re looking bad, son.”

  “Yeah. Feel it.”

  “We can’t go much further. That dining room is clogged with Housies. Looks like that Harold guy got his balls together.”