Dead of Veridon

by Tim Akers

  "So, this really interesting conversation you had with the Lady Bright, while standing in this absolutely dull and nondescript building which, according to your story, may have had a couple bodies in it." He straightened out and shook his head. "What was that about? The stuff about your dad, and you maybe being groomed to take his spot on the Council?"

  "Yeah, I'm not sure. It's like she doesn't know the story between me and Alexander." I stayed out of Council politics; even stayed away from the periphery of Council business. Alexander had disowned me, twice now. With the turnover rate in the Council, I was sure there were people in that chamber who didn't even know he had a son. Veronica Bright seemed to be one of them. "What I really didn't like was the bit about how Alexander might not be in any kind of shape to approve of what Angela's doing."

  Wilson squinted at me. Alexander had been complicit in some things Angela did a couple years ago, might even have been directly involved. He was usually pretty deeply involved in the dirty side of Council politics. If he was no longer paying that close attention to the chamber games, I wondered what he was doing with his time.

  "When's the last time you talked to the old man?" Wilson asked, delicately.

  "Probably shortly after he kicked me out of the house." I stared out into the crowd. "Does shouting count?"

  We sat quietly for a minute, the cart owner increasing the severity and frequency of his angry stares, until Wilson finally clapped me on the shoulder.

  "Let's have a word with Alexander, perhaps?"

  "Sure. I can't imagine that going wrong." I stood up and dusted the memory of that horrible chowder from my mind. "But seriously, first we're going to stop somewhere and pick me up a revolver. Just in case."

  THE OLD HOUSE stood on a little hill, nothing more than a jumble of rocks that rose up out of the street to break up the monotony of town houses and warehouses. No soil on those rocks, except what generations of Burns had brought in, and the ground was hot. We had always had trouble maintaining the formal gardens that were expected of the Founders' estates. Now that the money was gone, nothing remained of those gardens but withered shrubs that clung to the stony ground like dead spiders. Rain and the heat that radiated from the ground had washed the rest away.

  The house itself looked like those bushes. Dried out and twisted, roots clinging desperately to the hill, all the color washed out. I remembered grander days, and although the house was no smaller than it had been back then, the whole estate looked like it had collapsed in on itself. And the air, that smell, like burning dust. The ground thrummed with the warm engines of the Deep Furnace. I never noticed the smell when I was a kid. Used to it, I guess.

  I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Coming back here, even now, was a waste of time. Alexander had given me his speech, he had said the words that he felt needed saying. I wasn't welcome here. I would never be welcome here. And yet, what that girl had said. Veronica. The way she talked about my father, as though Angela had him by the shirt strings and was just leading him around. I had to know what that meant. I had to know what had become of my father.

  He didn't even bother locking the gate anymore. There was nothing to steal here, people knew. What we'd had was mortgaged or sold. Just the house, and the history of our name. Still. You'd think he would lock the gate. Wilson hung back a little bit, his hand resting on the rusted iron of the gate as I walked up to the front door. The cobbles of the walk were uneven, the mortar washed away and the stones pushed up by weeds and erosion, until it was a challenge to walk across them. Have to get that fixed, someday.

  I banged on the knocker and waited. A long time, honestly, and when the door opened it protested the unexpected change. Williamson, our family's long time servant, stood with his hand on the door, staring at me.

  "Bil... Williamson," I said, remembering how much he hated being called Billy. "Long time since I've seen you. What brings you here?"

  "What brings... ha!" He laughed, which was not something he usually did. "What brings me here. Brilliant, Master Jacob. Brilliant!" He shuffled out onto the front porch and put an arm over my shoulder. "Come in, come in. Do come in!"

  There was a little hysteria in his voice, and he nearly shut the door on Wilson in his haste to throw the latch. Once we were all in, he rattled a number of locks and then stood with his back against the door, his joviality abandoned.

  "This had better be damned good, Jacob Burn," he said, a fresh glimmer of sweat beading across his balding head. "The old man's going to assume you're here to kill him."

  "Kill him? You're kidding, right? I mean, not that I wouldn't kill him if it was justified, you understand, I just don't think this is the time for it."

  "Don't even joke about it." Billy pushed himself away from the door with an effort and walked to an archway that had once been a coat room. He slid a nasty looking knife from his cuff and slid it into a sheath hanging just inside the arch. This bit of sleight-of-hand got an appreciative look from Wilson, but made me nervous. Last time I'd seen Billy, he had no more been capable of holding a fighting knife properly than of flying. "Let's get everyone a drink, then, and we can figure out what to tell your father about this little visit."

  "What to tell him? Tell him that I want to see how he's doing."

  "Funny. Two years without a breath from you, and you drop by in the middle of all this," he said. "That'll bring a smile to his face."

  "Billy, what the hell is going on around here? Where's my father?"

  "Upstairs. Where you're not going, until you know something more about this. Let's get that drink." He walked past us, completely ignoring Wilson, other than to nod as he went by. Last time Billy met the anansi, he had nearly pissed himself. "You still drink, don't you, Jacob?"

  "I've yet to be given a good reason to stop," I answered.

  "I imagine today will provide plenty of reasons to keep the habit," he muttered, then disappeared down the hall. Wilson popped one of his happier smiles, then bowed and motioned me forward. First time in a while I hadn't been looking forward to a drink.

  ONE OF THE jewels of the Manor Burn was its bar. This room stood as one of the gatehouses of my childhood. Early memories were of a dark room, sheathed in leather and stained wood, where my father and his friends would retreat from the women and children to discuss important matters. I would sneak down the hall to listen to them drink and laugh and joke. Most of these important matters seemed to involve women who were not mother, but once in a while I would overhear some bit of serious news, some murder or political strategy that had gone amiss. I treasured these early memories, because they had been the last time I looked with awe on my father's role in society.

  It was also in this room that father gave me the news that I had been accepted to the Academy, where he told me he had arranged for my PilotEngine surgery personally, and later where he had dressed me down for my expulsion and the disgrace that had followed. Not one word of the people who died in the accident, nor one hint that it was my father's personal surgeons who had planted the seeds of my failure during that surgery, that my PilotEngine was actually an artifact hidden in my chest at the behest of the Church of the Algorithm. But I've told that story.

  This is where I came when I moved back into the house, no longer welcome in the barracks or among my supposed friends. This is where he greeted me, where he told me that mother was leaving, that my brother was dead. That I would never be the heir of the Burn line, because he would rather the name die out than pass to someone like me. Anyway.

  Through it all, the room remained the same. Too warm in the summer, too cool in the winter. The rows of leatherbound books untouched on the walls. And the bar, broad and shiny, with its glittering glass display shelves, underlit, so that the bottles of rare and expensive liquor sparkled in the dark room. Constellations of intoxication. Even when the money was gone, father did not get rid of the collection, except for what he drank. Which, apparently, had become quite a lot.

  Billy was helping, clearly. He laid out three glas
ses and selected a fine whiskey from the shelves. Fewer bottles now, and those that remained were mostly empty. Billy poured us up and stoppered the bottle, but left it on the bar. Wilson and I sat down and watched my father's faithful servant drain his glass and pour another.

  "I have trouble believing that things have gotten tougher than they were," I said.

  "More difficult? Probably not. But certainly more immediate." Billy stared at his glass as though it were an oracle speaking wisdom. His eyes were watery and old. I wondered how much of the household he was running these days, how much of the burden of the Burn problem was his to manage. "There has always been an element of the inevitable in what we do, here. The father is getting older. One son is dead, the other" - he glanced at me - "unwelcome. Just a matter of time before things came to a head."

  "What, exactly, has come to a head?" Wilson asked.

  Billy looked between us. I couldn't tell if he didn't know how to answer, or just didn't know how much he wanted to say in front of Wilson. He took a slow drink from his glass and sighed.

  "Jacob, your father is an old man. A troubled man. The events of the last two years have worn him quite thin. And I worry now that he might be breaking."

  I drank, to give myself a breath to think out what I wanted to say next. My immediate response wouldn't be appropriate. The whiskey was a good, complicated dram, and I let it sit on my tongue and burn my eyes while I turned the conversation over in my head. Wilson spoke up before I could come up with something polite.

  "Mr. Williamson, sir, as much as I enjoy sitting in the wreckage of aristocracy and mourning the passing of an age of privilege and expensive tastes by drinking the master's very fine whiskey, Jacob and I don't really have time for this sort of conversation. There are things that we need to know, and unless you're attending Council meetings, I seriously doubt you're going to be able to answer our questions." He drank the whole glass in front of him with a snort, then slammed the glass on the bar. "We must speak to Jacob's father, immediately."

  Billy smiled at that, a kind of sad smile that reminded me of my father on his better days.

  "Alexander hasn't been going to many meetings, himself. And as to his ability to answer your questions, well. I suppose that depends on the questions, and how you ask them."

  "Do we need to write them on little slips of paper and stuff them under his door?" Wilson asked angrily. "Or maybe give them to you, and let you scurry off like a priest at an oracle? Or do we go to the man, and ask him directly? Because that's how I prefer to ask my questions."

  "I can't imagine why the two of you get in so much trouble," Billy said quietly, looking down at the glass that had paused on his lip. "With such subtlety of form and intention. You would do so well in the Council."

  "Perhaps the Council could do with a little less subtlety," I said, trying to insert myself between Wilson's rant and Billy's nostalgia. "Might get something done."

  "Oh. The Council gave up on subtlety, at least as far as the Family Burn is concerned."

  "Hence the jack-knife in your coat room," I asked. "And all the secrecy as to my father's wellbeing? What's going on, Billy? What's got you so badly spooked?"

  "Your father," he answered. He looked at me with eyes that were almost apologetic. "That man scares the living hell out of me, Jacob."

  "He's become violent?" I asked.

  "Not at all. Worse." Billy shakily drank the rest of his glass and stared at the bottle, steeling himself. "He's become a prophet. Or mad. Probably both."

  "That one you're going to have to explain," I said.

  "It started maybe a year ago. Maybe less." He put his hand on the bottle, thoughtfully tapping his finger against the glass neck. "Just part of Council business. But it required him to review some military records. He came across the accounts of your brother's death. He had read them before, of course, immediately after. But it seemed different, this time. His reaction. Alexander kept the report aside, after his business with Council was over. Kept it in his office. I found it on his desk. Shortly after that, he was required to travel upriver. Again, on business."

  "Did he go that far?" I asked, carefully. My brother Noah was in the navy, part of the Exploratory Corps that tested the edges of Veridon's empire in the wilds upriver. He died in something that might have been a skirmish, or it might have been a massacre. The Eranti had been blamed, but no acts of war were ever drawn up. In the end, the whole mess was buried and forgotten. Like my brother.

  "Not quite. But he went well beyond the usual borders of the empire. Some sort of trade agreement. They were out of communication for weeks. And when he returned, there was something different about him." A decision resolved behind Billy's eyes. He took his hands off the bottle and folded them on the bar in front of him. "He never indicated anything odd happened on the trip until months later. That's when the visions started."

  "We could just cut to the marrow and say that he's going mad," Wilson said. He took the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another. "Here, let me prophesy, tell me how I do. Alexander has seen visions of his dead son, his wife, his lost grandchildren and maybe even one Jacob Burn. He regrets betraying the one, losing the other and alienating the last, in no particular order." The anansi sipped at his whiskey and smiled. "Let's be honest. Alexander Burn is single-handedly responsible for the demise of his family and the loss of its prestige in the Council. This place is falling apart, and it's entirely his fault. Frankly I'm shocked he didn't go mad years ago."

  "You shouldn't be so glib about this," Billy said, bitterly.

  "No, you shouldn't be so serious about it. I know you're loyal to the man, but he's gone off the rails. What are we going to see if we go upstairs, eh? Does old Alexander walk around in penitent's garb, tearing at the few remaining wisps of his hair and crying out to the darkness? Or has he gone for something more dramatic?"

  "That is my father you're talking about," I said. "Maybe we should give him a chance to explain himself?"

  Billy sighed, staring at the floor. "No, you have it right. He's fashioned himself a... well. A costume."

  "A costume," Wilson crooned happily. "Oh, that's grand. Tell me, is it the robes of a king, or a jester, or maybe one of the Celestes? Or, maybe, just maybe, old Alexander goes around in women's things? Please tell me it's women's things."

  "He mutters a lot about fires in the city, and the dead. And sometimes he's right about things, weeks before they happen." Billy covered his face with his hand. "Sometimes it seems like he's talking to the dead, or those who are about to die, or have been dead for generations. And he's taken to wearing a mask. Black. There are words across the face of it, but I don't know the language."

  I didn't hear the glass snap in my hand, but I felt the bite of the whiskey as it mixed with the blood lacing its way down my wrist. I turned to look at Wilson, but he was gone, heading to the stairs. I followed. Billy stayed at the bar, talking to us as we left, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.

  Chapter Nine

  The Two Voices

  LIKE MOST HOMES of a certain age, the Manor Burn had more rooms than the family had ever used. The ambitions of the architect outstretched the progeny of the elder Burns, and whole wings had alternately been shuttered and rehabilitated in the generations my family had been living here. As a child I used to make a game of the empty chambers, searching for ghosts or treasure, or making up stories about the ancestors who'd once lived in those dusty rooms.

  This only got worse as the family's fortunes declined. No servants meant no servant quarters. No parties meant no formal dining room. No money meant no library, no stockhouse, no stables. All of those rooms had been sealed away or just left empty, until the Manor Burn was mostly a graveyard of bedrooms and corridors and closets.

  So when Billy said that father was upstairs, I assumed that meant in one of the recently lived-in sections of the house. Before I left, my father and mother made their quarters in the master suites, just off the solar on the second floor. I found it abandoned.
The solar itself looked well used, but not recently. I wondered if someone had been squatting in the semi-outdoor space, judging by the bedroll and primitive fire in one corner. That's where Billy found us.

  "Those are his," he said. "When he came back from the upriver, he couldn't stand to be away from the stars. So he claimed." Billy toed the bedroll. I couldn't imagine my rotund father sleeping out here, on the ground. "I think something about the house frightened him. The way his eyes moved, always looking in corners, down empty halls. I should have known something was going on. Things have been so strange."

  "Where is he, Billy?" I asked sharply. Billy collapsed a little bit.

  "Follow me. Just" - he held up a hand - "just don't judge him."

  "I think it's going to be lady's things," Wilson whispered behind me. I shushed him, then nodded my assent to Billy. The old servant led us deeper into the house, and higher up.

  These were corridors I hadn't seen in a long time. Even with the thrumming power of the Deep Forge at our feet, it was difficult to heat these spaces in the winter. Besides, any scrap of power that went into the house was a scrap that wasn't being sold to the city. And while the market had collapsed, the rates people were willing to pay now a mere whisper of what they had once been, every scrap counted. More than ever, now.

  Billy took us about as high up as the manor went. I remembered some of these rooms from my childhood wanderings. Especially the room where we stopped: the grand solar. Its glass dome was speckled with wooden planks, where the tiny jewel-like panes of glass had fallen out over the years. Somewhere along the way, even this mediocre repair work had ceased, and much of the dome blinked up into the sky. I was startled to realize that it was full night, stars glittering down at us through the dome. There was little light in the grand solar, other than what washed in from the city outside. Billy went to a side cabinet and began fumbling with a frictionlamp.