Empire of Bones (Ashtown Burials #3)

by N. D. Wilson

  “Hey,” Cyrus said. He tried to sit up. “Where are we going?”

  A heavy hand plunged into the garlic and held Cyrus’s head down.

  “Hush, lad,” Sterling said. “Don’t speak, don’t move.”

  The elevator jerked to a stop. Cyrus heard the doors rattle open, and suddenly, he was surrounded by familiar noises—knives chopping, oven doors banging, pots clanking, yelps and shouts and laughs and songs. Sterling was pushing him into the great kitchens of Ashtown.

  Even through the garlic the smells reached him, and his stomach rolled over on a bed of nails. How long had it been since he’d eaten? As he counted back the hours, the hunger inside him grew with the injustice of it all. And the hunger made him realize how tired he was. And the weariness made his calf prick up for some aching attention—yes, there had been pellets in his leg. And his head ached from slamming onto the chapel floor, and all of it together made Cyrus try to focus on how much trouble he was in, relying on Big Ben Sterling, of all people, to keep him safe in Ashtown. Maybe he’d hit his head too hard, or maybe the adrenaline from the chapel and the tunnels and almost being killed by Romeo had pushed him too far to worry about himself. His worry was real; the fear inside him was loud, but it was aimed elsewhere.

  What had happened to Rupert? Was he alive? Was he in the lake? Had he been taken? Was he on his way to face Phoenix already? Or was his body sprawled in blood in some hallway Cyrus hadn’t taken? What would happen without Rupert?

  Cyrus wormed his face over to the canvas side of the trolley. He could see lights and shapes as they passed. He traced the cloth with his fingertips and found a tiny frayed square. He picked at the loose threads with his fingernails until he had a little peephole just big enough for one garlicky eye.

  Sterling talked as they walked, calling out orders as he marched the garlic trolley past the fire island of lit burners and sizzling pans being shaken by fresh-faced underlings who had been sent to the kitchens to work off back dues or were simply failed Acolytes who had been kept on as staff. They were usually members of dying or depleted O of B families who knew no life outside of the Estates. You progressed through the O of B and lived on its upper decks as a member, or you slipped belowdecks and remained forever a servant.

  Cyrus had asked Dennis Gilly why he had stayed in Ashtown as a porter when he could have gone out into the wider world and become any number of things. Dennis hadn’t even understood the question. He didn’t know what kind of things people became, or why they would want to. He served the O of B. Oh, and leaving meant his kids would never be eligible for membership. Not that their father, pulling in staff wages opening doors in a bowler hat, would have been able to afford to pay their Order dues anyway.

  Sterling turned the trolley and pulled it backward through a swinging door. The kitchen sounds muted as the door thumped on its hinges. Cyrus peered through his peephole and saw that they were in the dining hall.

  Not many people. Less than half of what Cyrus would expect from a breakfast crowd. Empty tables. Scattered chairs. Low voices. Plates with no owners.

  “Ben!” someone whispered. “Where are the monks? The alarms … awful rumors … that liar Bellamy says it was a drill.”

  “Show some respect,” a woman scolded. “He is your Brendan.”

  “The Abbot and his monks are all dead,” Sterling said quietly. “Attacked and murdered in one of their own chapels this very morning.”

  Cyrus was shocked. He’d expected a laugh and a lie. The trolley wheeled on. What was Sterling doing?

  Cyrus could hear the news rolling through the room like a growing wind. He heard whispers hissing, chairs scraping, silver banging down onto plates.

  “Who?” a man shouted. “Ben, who would dare?”

  More voices rose.

  “The transmortals, that’s who!” a man bellowed. “The Ordo Bleeding Draconis!”

  “No! No!” a woman shouted. “It’s that bloodthirsty Rupert Greeves!”

  Cyrus jerked in anger. He almost climbed out of the garlic right there. He wanted to see that woman’s face; he wanted to know who would believe such a thing.

  “Phoenix!” The voice was younger, a girl’s voice.

  “Hush, child,” an old man said. “Our Bellamy has an understanding with that animal.”

  “Probably Bellamy himself,” someone nearby muttered. “The monks were no friends of his.”

  “He would never,” a woman said.

  “Members!” Sterling said, and the trolley suddenly stopped. Silence settled on the room slowly, quieting every clatter. “I’m only a simple cook. I can’t say who did this or why.”

  “Rupert Greeves!” The voice was female and sharp. “He dropped Flint with a note in the courtyard, and then the monks are attacked? You want us to believe differently?”

  “But,” Sterling continued, “I did clap eyes on the body of one of the attackers. The monks put up some defense.”

  Cyrus swallowed, waiting. The room was still.

  “It was a man,” Sterling said. “A big man. And he had himself a pair of gills.”

  The word Phoenix raced around the room in whispers.

  “I knew it would happen!” the sharp woman shouted. “Rupert always was a man of blood; now he’s joined with Phoenix.”

  Cyrus jerked his knees and then his feet underneath him. He pushed himself up and stood, overflowing garlic all around him.

  Sterling sighed.

  “Who said that?” Cyrus shouted. Hundreds of eyes locked onto him. No one moved. Cyrus sputtered and spat out the paper from a garlic clove. He scanned the room. The friendly and familiar faces he remembered were all gone. Rupert had told him most of the best people in the Order had left Ashtown and were hunkered down on private estates. This was a crowd with no fondness for Smiths, a crowd more concerned with their own wealth and status and survival than with any ancient mission or duty that might exist for the O of B.

  Cyrus was breathing hard, his jaw cramping with anger. Sterling’s heavy fire gun dangled from Cyrus’s right hand. He searched eyes and saw fear in every one of them. One woman thirty feet away stood behind her chair. She had red hair, pinched cheeks, and a pointed chin. Cyrus stared at her, and he watched her wither.

  “I was with Rupert,” Cyrus said. “He was meeting with the monks. The Irish Cryptkeepers were rejoining the O of B. But then Phoenix’s Reborn attacked.”

  Standing in garlic up to his knees, Cyrus looked away from the woman, scanning the crowd for opponents, daring anyone to challenge him.

  “No one hates Phoenix more than Rupert Greeves,” he said. “No one is more willing to die for any one of you cowards than Rupert Greeves. If you had any courage, you would throw Bellamy Cook out and stand with Rupert. You would help him hunt down and end Phoenix.”

  “Who gave him the tooth?” the sharp woman asked. “Who was that, then?”

  Cyrus turned back to her. He threw one leg over the side of the trolley to step out.

  The woman now held a long revolver. “Traitor,” she said.

  The trolley tipped. Cyrus slipped. As he fell, the echoes of the gunshot mixed with screams. He landed on his back in a rolling river of garlic. His right hand tightened as his breath left him, and he felt the heavy gun kick in his hand.

  A white fireball swirled straight up toward the ceiling, exploding through the beams and chandeliers like a firework.

  People were running. Chairs were tumbling. Women were screaming. White flame fluttered down through the room like snow. Gasping, Cyrus looked up as Sterling leaned in over him, golden ear bells grazing his bristly cheeks.

  “Change of plans, lad,” Sterling hissed. A metal leg thumped into Cyrus’s skull.

  Antigone jerked awake. Diana was punching her in the shoulder.

  “Let’s go, Tigs!” Diana shouted over the sound of the engines. “I need your eyes!”

  Antigone blinked, sat up, tucked her black hair behind her ears—it felt oily on her fingers; she needed to wash it soon—and looked ar
ound. After Mexico, she had crashed hard. While the old, flat-nosed tanker truck had pumped fuel into the plane, everyone had stretched their legs on the small gravel airstrip with the sun-bleached wind sock fluttering above a tiny trailer that sat tipping slightly on uneven ground. A thick, smiling woman had lugged a pot outside and served up mounds of rice and beans on paper plates. Antigone had wolfed two platefuls and the woman had patted her cheek happily, as pleased with Antigone’s dark skin and dark hair as she was with her appetite.

  Cold, dripping glass bottles of Coke had been pulled from a rattling ice swamp inside an old metal cooler, and Antigone had downed two of those as well, even though they were sweeter than any soda she had ever tasted—strong sweet, like molasses.

  The woman had kissed her goodbye, and had prattled long strings of Spanish love and admiration at Katie Smith once she’d realized that Antigone was her daughter. Katie Smith had smiled and thanked her, but in rough Spanish. Her own mother tongue was similar in rhythm but much different.

  With too little sleep and a very full belly, Antigone had been blinking slowly before the plane finished climbing after takeoff. She’d been asleep before they were above the ocean.

  Antigone crossed her arms and shut her eyes again. It felt nice.

  “Tigs!”

  This time Diana punched her hard. When Antigone opened her eyes again, the older girl tapped her own headset and pointed. Antigone’s headset had fallen down around her neck. She stretched, yawned, and put it on.

  “I’ve decided I don’t like flying,” Antigone said, hearing her own voice crackle in her ears.

  “Oh, really?” Diana smirked. “Just now you decided that? Do you not remember all of our little training sessions when you would practically start bawling when I made you take the stick?”

  “I didn’t bawl,” Antigone said. “I didn’t even cry. I was just really uncomfortable with the whole idea of falling out of the sky.”

  Diana banked the plane, and Antigone looked out her window and down at the pale ocean and an island shaped like a fingernail-thin crescent moon, its two points bent until they were almost touching. A long, rectangular boat was anchored between them.

  “I should fill out a trainer review for you on this flight.” Diana laughed. “You’ve been a real gem of a copilot, snoring over there. Your brother did the same thing when we flew to Llew’s. But now you’ve got to help me out. This is the place, but we have to decide where to set this bird down.”

  “Some random island,” Antigone said. “With some freaky outlawed Sage woman who was on a map of Skelton’s. Just land anywhere. This’ll be great.”

  “In a little less than an hour, we will just land anywhere, thank you,” Diana said. “We’ll be floating without fuel.”

  The plane turned long and hard and slow, dropping as it banked. Antigone glanced at Diana, and the older girl smiled back. She was pushing the plane into a stall. They weren’t flying anymore; they were falling. Antigone grabbed her armrests. The plane drifted slowly nose-down and accelerated. Diana laughed as they picked up speed.

  “Just getting their attention,” she said. “We don’t want to surprise anyone.” She flipped a switch and shifted into a radio call. “This is Billy Bones to Fat Betty, hang on to your hats down there. Over.”

  The plane leveled out low enough over the ocean that the island stuck up in profile against the sky. Black lava rock rose in cliffs edged with pockets of white sand. Palm trees clustered like frond fountains. Long, curling waves rolled in over an outer reef. The island’s crescent harbor clearly held deep water because the ship in the center was a fat-bellied freighter, its deck almost as high as the cliffs.

  Diana roared over the island and down the length of the ship. The deck was green and dotted with trees. Dark shapes—not human—loped across it.

  Then the island was behind them and Diana banked the plane again.

  “We have to land in the water,” Antigone said. “The deck is big, but it’s covered with grass and trees.”

  Diana shook her head. “This is Billy Bones to Fat Betty, approaching to land on your bow. Instruct if needed.”

  “Fat Betty to Billy Bones.” The woman’s voice was a surprise in Antigone’s ear. “Mind the trees and come out with empty hands high or I’ll cook you for supper. Over.”

  “Roger that,” Diana said. “Over.”

  She flipped the switch back off and looked at Antigone. “Nice. Lemon Chauncey, cannibal.”

  This time Diana slowed and tilted her rotors up on her approach. Antigone pressed her forehead against the window and watched the ship beneath them. On the stern, there was a large greenhouse with sparkling glass and fan blades spinning in the roof. The ship’s bridge was three stories high and crowned with bent and battered antennae, a railed steel deck, and a glassed-in cabin. The whole bridge was equal parts white paint and rust, but in front of it, the long bow looked like a botanical garden. There were hedges and paths and trees and grassy lawns dotted with what looked like grazing curly-horned sheep diligently ignoring the plane above them. And there were larger shapes, too, clinging to the shadows, very much paying attention to the plane.

  Diana twisted the plane in the air, facing the rust-and-white bridge, and set it down slowly on a flat, grassy platform at the very tip of the bow. Then she killed the engines. Antigone stared at the sheep, at the shapes hiding in the trees, and then up at the bridge. She could see someone looking at them from behind a window. The person turned away and disappeared.

  As the propellers whirled their way toward silent, Diana tugged off her headset.

  “Well,” she said, “this isn’t going to get any more normal with waiting.”

  Antigone nodded and then twisted in her seat, looking back into the cabin. Horace was on his feet, stretching. He checked his pocket watch, tugged down his vest, and began to polish his spectacles. Dan was stretching his thick arms straight up and his legs out in front of him. Pythia was motionless by his feet and completely hidden in her nest of hair. Nolan was already opening the outer door. Katie Smith ruffled her short chopped hair, widened her eyes at her daughter, and groaned.

  “I do not like to fly,” she said. “I am made for the ground.”

  Antigone smiled. “Me too, Mom. It didn’t have to be that rough, though. Diana was showing off.”

  Diana slid past her into the cabin. Nolan threw the door open and kicked down an unfolding metal flight of stairs. Warm sea air filled the plane.

  “Okay,” Diana said. “We’re supposed to get out with our hands up and clearly empty. Everyone listening? Nolan? Hands empty and high.” She turned around. “Antigone, I think you should go first. You were Skelton’s Acolyte and are more of an outlaw than the rest of us. If this Lemon lady is touchy, blame Skelton. He gave you the map.” Diana pressed back into Nolan, clearing a path for Antigone to the open door. Nolan yawned, then crossed his pale arms.

  Antigone stood, jerky on her joints, and moved back into the cabin. Diana dug a piece of paper plate out of her pocket and handed it over.

  “From Rupert,” she said. “This is the stuff he wants us to focus on. But don’t mention him. Go as long as possible without saying his name.”

  Antigone looked at the short list of unexplained topics.

  Radu’s Dragon

  Brendan’s Breath

  Tooth Tools (Weapons)

  Cryptkeepers (Brother Boniface Brosnan)

  She shoved it into her pocket.

  “Go ahead,” Diana said. “And keep your hands up.”

  “Dan?” Katie Smith said. “Shouldn’t you go first? Should you be with her?”

  Antigone smiled at her mother. If Cyrus had been going first, Antigone would have been saying the same thing. But Cyrus was far away. It was her turn to do the worrisome thing.

  “She’s good, Mom,” Dan said. “We’ll be right behind her.”

  Stepping out of the plane, Antigone was looking over the rusty rail of the ship at the crescent island of cliffs and palm trees. She could
hear distant waves crashing and the harsh laziness of complaining gulls. The trees along the cliffs swirled slowly in the wind, dry-mopping the sky. With her hands up, she hopped off the wobbly plane stairs and onto the grass-covered platform. She turned.

  The ship was intensely gardened. Long, level lawns were densely framed with fruit trees in front of the tall white-and-rust bridge. She saw oranges and bananas, grapefruit and what she assumed were mangoes. Short, woolly sheep grazed in the open, but her eyes had already settled on three huge shapes creeping out of the shadows beneath the trees. They leaned forward on their fists, and as they entered the sunlight, she saw that they were covered with deep orange fur, a livelier version of the ship’s rust. Huge hairless faces as round as they were flat were pointed at her. Nostrils flared. Thick lips curled. Orangutans. Sixty or seventy feet away. Big ones. Bigger than gorillas. She wondered how quickly they could close that distance.

  Antigone lowered her hands.

  “Guys,” she said. “I’m not sure—”

  A rifle cracked and turf kicked up at Antigone’s feet.

  “Hands high!” The metallic voice blasted over the deck from a loudspeaker. Antigone threw her hands back up in the air. The orangutans were still moving slowly forward, heads cocking, nostrils sniffing.

  “Okay!” Antigone shouted. “I’m sorry! The monkeys startled me!”

  “Apes,” the loudspeaker barked. “Not monkeys. State your name and your business. And speak up!”

  “Antigone Smith!” She looked up at the windows in the bridge. “I’m here to talk to Lemon Chauncey. William Skelton was my Keeper. He sent me.”

  The ship was silent. Antigone’s eyes settled on the orange ape in the center. He moved around a nibbling sheep and the animal barely even took notice.

  “Skelton’s been dead a year,” the speaker said. “Why should I believe you?”

  “He left a message,” Antigone said. “A map. It took us a while to figure it out.”

  The loudspeaker laughed. “Intelligent, are you? Well, I expected you here a year ago. Don’t feel too bad; Billy Bones overworked everything by half. I told him the Empire of Bones thing would be too much for ignorant moderns, but he couldn’t see past your last name. ‘They’re Smiths, Lemon,’ he said. ‘Smiths will crack it quick.’ It was almost too simple, he thought, but I knew you would be a pair of fools.”