Empire of Bones (Ashtown Burials #3)

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus jumped back to his stone chute. There wasn’t time for more investigation. He grabbed the cable and fished his right foot firmly into the stirrup. Then he reached for the lever.

  The door opened and a new man stepped into the room.

  “Bellamy wants him now!” he said. “I’ll see—”

  The man froze.

  “You later,” Cyrus said, and he jerked the lever.

  Gears clicked. The wall swung shut even as the man drew his gun and jumped forward. Cyrus expected to drop. Instead, he shot straight up, rattling against the walls, clipping his shoulders and elbows and toes against grimy stone.

  Patricia glowed around his wrist, showing Cyrus his speed as they rocketed up and up and up. They slowed. They stopped. They swung in place. A large spool of cable hummed quietly above Cyrus’s head.

  Cyrus banged around and twisted, searching for an opening in the walls. His leg was shaking, and he was dizzy enough already without the spinning. He needed to be sick and lie down and shut his eyes.

  Shouts echoed from beneath him. He saw light flooding the shaft at least sixty feet below him. Cyrus groaned. He shouldn’t have looked down. He threw up again, dampening his toes. A gun fired and a ricocheting bullet whined past him. He heard spattering liquid and loud squealing disgust.

  Patricia popped her tail into her mouth and turned off the light. With his free leg, Cyrus kicked at the walls. He swung and slammed his body against them.

  Heavy stone groaned and slid. A door opened, but there was very little light behind it, a whisper and nothing more. Cyrus lunged into a cool room and slammed onto a wooden floor. Sitting up, he reached back into the shaft and grabbed the swinging leather stirrup. Then he dug out the bone-handled knife and flipped open the blade. The rope was tough. He hacked at it, sawed at it, and the blade ate away millimeters with every bite.

  The big spool began to spin and the rope went slack. More than three-quarters of the way through, he tossed the stirrup back into the shaft and slammed the stone door. Whoever tried it next would be going down, not up.

  He put the knife in his hip pocket, wiped the sweat off his face, and looked around. Dim shapes sharpened as he stared. The place looked like an abandoned museum. Which meant he was in one of the Explorer collections—a collection he had never seen before.

  Cyrus stood slowly. The walls were high. The room was long. Stone columns rose to black wrought-iron beams that looked like something from an old-fashioned train station. The beams held up a roof of paned glass. The glass was coated with dust, but Cyrus could see the night sky and the glow of the moon on a row of monstrous winged statues. He was about as high as anyone could get in Ashtown. As high as the Brendan’s chambers, even. And it was night.

  Sterling had knocked him out during breakfast. For the first time, Cyrus wondered if he hadn’t just been concussed. Sterling could have slipped him anything when he was unconscious. He licked the insides of his cheeks, fishing for strange tastes. Nothing but stomach acid. He spat on the floor and began to move forward between the pillars, and the moon swung slowly into view above him as he walked.

  Considering the other collections Cyrus had explored, this place felt relatively empty. There were chests—all locked. There were bookshelves—locked behind wire cage doors. There were three solid blocks of stone covered with long, winding Latin sentences scrawled in white chalk. There was a cat carcass dried into a flat furry Frisbee on the wooden floor. And owl pellets. And bat bones.

  Dust kicked up around Cyrus’s feet as he walked. No one had been in this place for a long time—and definitely no one official. Any normal member would have wanted the floor swept, or at least the dead animals picked up. A maid or porter would have been summoned with a broom immediately. Cyrus began to wonder if there had been another secret way out of Sterling’s room, because this place was on the way to nowhere. He looked back at the solid stone wall where he had arrived. There was no sign of a door.

  Cyrus turned between two pillars and into an aisle of statues. Three steps in, he stopped. Something was very wrong with the stone shapes. He backed up and assessed them all. Their feet were in solid blocks, but the rest was all too realistic, too exactly human in proportion. Artists modify and stylize. These were exact copies, and they were copies of people in pain. Those nearest him were dressed like the Explorers he’d seen in the oldest photos—men and women of the nineteenth century. But they had gashes in their necks or arms hacked halfway off or legs slit wide open or bullet holes in their chests. Farther down the row, the clothing grew older. All the way at the end, the statues were in monks’ robes, and he could see stone weapons—arrows, knives, swords, darts—sticking out of them.

  Cyrus roused Patricia and crouched with her light to examine the base of the nearest statue—a man with a big mustache wearing long trousers and a vest with a watch chain. His sleeves were rolled up, his fingers were spread wide and tensed, and there were four holes in his chest. A paper card had been attached to the stone block that encased his feet.

  John Henry Holiday, Explorer, given to

  forbidden stone sleep November 8, 1887,

  confiscated with others from the

  Cult of the Reaper, December 21, 1921

  Cyrus reached out slowly and touched the man’s leg. The stone was warm, even through his glove. Jerking his hand away, he hopped up and backed quickly out of the aisle. He didn’t want to read the other names. They would be warm, too. They would all be warm, waiting for someone with the power to wake them and keep them alive.

  Heart pounding, head throbbing, Cyrus turned and jogged past wide aisles without even trying to identify what they held. Sterling knew where he was, so he probably knew other ways into this place. And if he did, the others might as well.

  At the end of an aisle, he saw a door. Holding up Patricia, Cyrus turned and ran toward it, passing racks of bladed weapons and dolls stuffed with straw and short fat jars shaped like people. The door was large, wooden with iron hinges, and without a knob or ring or keyhole to be seen. But leaning against the wall beside it, there was a tall ladder leading up to planks that stretched between the vaulted iron trusses in the ceiling. The planks made a walkway to a jagged hole in the glass.

  Cyrus let Patricia disappear around his wrist, and then he grabbed on to the ladder and scrambled up as quickly as his dizzy head allowed. He crawled across the bowing planks, ignoring every pop and sigh beneath him. He stood, eyed the iron frame where the glass had been broken out, and then jumped, catching the metal with the grip on his gloved hands. With one kick in the air, he pulled himself up and through, onto the steep glass roof, and into a breeze off the lake.

  “Move, and I’ll snap your bloody head off,” an Irish voice said behind him.

  Cyrus jerked in surprise and almost fell. Slapping his palms down onto the glass, he looked back over his shoulder.

  Niffy stepped out from the shadow of a huge winged statue. His robe was shredded and his face was a mess of blood and burns. Half of his Mohawk was missing.

  Cyrus rolled over onto his back and then sat up, showing the monk his empty hands.

  “It’s me,” Cyrus said. “Where’s Rupert?”

  “Rupert?” Niffy snorted. “Rupert’s dead, mate. The Abbot’s dead. My brothers are dead. We’re all dead. Now tell me why your pocket’s glowing.”

  fourteen

  EXECUTION

  DENNIS GILLY BUTTONED UP THE WOODEN TOGGLES on the heavy wool sweater Llewellyn had given him, and he crossed his arms to watch Arachne work. A cold wind was blowing down over the mountains, swaying the trees all through the camp and ruffling the lake. Dark clouds were piling up on the horizon, erasing the twilight. The splitting in Dennis’s head had calmed, and his mental confusion was settling back down to its normal levels. The dizziness was completely gone, but he couldn’t remember anything at all from the last week. He remembered breakfast. And he remembered following Arachne in her long slow circle through the woods around the camp. He had listened to her quiet h
um, and he had looked away quickly every time her arctic eyes had turned their icy light onto him. He had watched the spiders work.

  Millions of them were still working, nesting the camp inside walls of silk.

  Arachne was kneeling beside a flat stone on the bank above the water. Her spider bag was empty beside her.

  Dennis looked up at the shivering lake, once again wishing he could be sailing. Even in a cold storm, he was happier riding the wind across the water than anywhere else. Sailing was the one thing he was really good at.

  Gunner dragged a wooden chair down the bank and dropped it beside Dennis. The tall Texan was wearing a dark wool coat with its collar pulled up beneath his ears and a cap pulled down all the way to his blond hooded brows. He lowered himself into the chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

  “So …,” Gunner drawled. “Are we worried yet?”

  Dennis looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  Gunner ignored Dennis. “Excuse me? Ma’am? Little Miss Muffet?”

  Arachne glanced back at him. “I’ll try again soon.”

  “Try what?” Dennis asked.

  “Rupert and Cyrus should have been back, what, four hours ago at the latest?” Gunner drew a long silver revolver from inside his coat, along with a small oil rag and rod. He began to polish the barrel. “Now here we are, with nowhere to go and nothing to go there in.”

  Arachne’s lips tightened. She looked up at the sky.

  “The Captain and Gil are fixing to brawl back at the lodge,” Gunner added. “Old Llew is playing referee. That strike you as wise?”

  “Do you think you could stop them?” Arachne asked. “Time must pass. And they are both men who must always challenge and test themselves and others.” She looked straight at Gunner, her voice hardening. “As are you. But you trust that metal in your hand and the slyness in your skull. You are testing me now. Am I afraid? Am I worried? Will I hurry away to stop the scuffling of two boys? For they are both boys—bearded, brawny, bombastic boys.”

  Gunner smiled. “I woulda thought boyhood ended somewhere in the first century of life.”

  “It never ends,” Arachne said. “Not for you. Not for them.”

  Through the woods, Dennis heard a shout followed by an enormous crash.

  “And they’re off,” Gunner said. “May the best boy win.”

  Arachne didn’t answer. She opened her pale hands and set a small wobbling ball of silver water on the stone in front of her.

  “Quick Water,” Dennis said. “Is that Cyrus’s?”

  “One-third,” Arachne answered. “Rupert carries part, and Antigone carries part. Thus far, I have glimpsed only cloth.” She parted the water with her fingers and then parted it again. Spiders swarmed up out of the grass to stretch the quivering spheres into threads. While Dennis watched, they began to weave two separate watery sheets.

  “What do you mean, dead?” Cyrus asked. “Where? Who killed him?”

  Niffy walked on the iron frames between the panes of glass, and then stood on the peak of the glass roof. His blistered face was chopped with little shadows.

  “Dead,” Niffy said. “Struck down. Soul and flesh parted. Breath gone from the body, lifeblood drained. Dead. We fought our way out of the chapel, and then we hunted gilled men through the bowels of Ashtown. Three escaped us. We parted, he to find you, and I to seek living brothers. We were to meet here and strike together. He swore that he would be here, or he would be dead.”

  Cyrus shook his head.

  Niffy stared at him. “It was an Avengel’s oath, no common promise. Sworn over the bodies of the fallen.”

  “He’s not dead,” Cyrus said. “Not unless you saw it happen. Not unless you were there and he said, ‘I’m dead,’ and you felt his pulse stop. I won’t believe it.”

  Niffy shrugged. “Then he has broken his oath and matters not. Better men than he fell today, and I will not let my anger cool to grief. We strike now, together. Or I strike alone.”

  Cyrus’s shirt pocket shook again. He dug his hand in and pulled out the tiny ball of water. While he watched, it sparkled silver and flattened in his palm. Niffy turned, staring while it fluttered up into a small, sharp silver liquid version of Arachne’s head.

  “Cyrus.” The small water voice was barely a whisper. “Where are you? Where’s Rupert?”

  “Ashtown.” Cyrus lowered his own voice to a whisper without thinking. “I don’t know where Rupe is. We lost the plane. Phoenix’s Reborn attacked.”

  Niffy crouched behind Cyrus and leaned in over his shoulder.

  “Always love a chat,” Niffy said. “But we’re off to the battlefield. Must run, love. The bloody murdering Brendan himself is waiting to die, so if you don’t mind …” He slapped the water flat on Cyrus’s palm and stood back up.

  Cyrus jumped to his feet and faced the monk. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Avenging my brothers,” Niffy said. “And your Keeper, like as not. You can ring your spider-witch back later. Right now I need a guide. Which rooftop road do we take?”

  Cyrus turned toward the lake and the row of statues, which overlooked the grass slopes that ran down to the airfield and the water. The statues were distant enough to be only dark shadows against the background of the moonlit lake, but he’d been in the Brendan’s rooms before. He knew those statues were just outside his walls of glass.

  “That way?” Niffy asked. “Grand. Are you armed?”

  “You can’t just go murder the Brendan,” Cyrus said.

  “Why not?” Niffy spat. “His allies murdered my brothers and my father.” His voice wavered. “As my heart beats, I am at war with him, his vile people, and any who do not stand against him. The whole O of B can go burn with him if it likes.”

  Churning air beat against Cyrus’s face and a shape shot above him in the darkness. Niffy drew a black-bladed sword out of the neck of his robe and dropped into a crouch. Another shape shot past, and the two huge dragonflies wheeled together in front of the moon and darted back toward Cyrus and the monk.

  A sharp whistle pulled them away just as Niffy began his swing. The dragonflies darted around and through the statues and away toward the shape of a man jogging stiffly along a roof peak, hopping on and over chimneys.

  “Ha!” Cyrus said. His whole body loosened, and he exhaled relief. Worry that he had denied and ignored washed away. The shape was Rupert’s—broad shoulders, narrow hips, thick neck, easy gait—and it was running toward them, dropping cautiously onto the glass roof.

  “Niffy!” Rupert hissed as he approached. “Now or never, Irish. They know we’re up here. We move now!”

  “Rupe!” Cyrus jogged toward him. “Man, I’m glad you’re alive.”

  Rupert froze. “Cyrus?” He looked straight up at the stars. “Good God above, I’m a lucky fool.” Looking back down, he smacked Cyrus’s head. “You had me more than worried. I can’t ever have that conversation with your mum, do you understand me? Never. Nor with Antigone. Outlive me, lad. Please.”

  Cyrus smiled in the dark, but Rupert didn’t look good. His right sleeve was burned away, and his arm looked gruesome all the way up to his bare shoulder. He’d strapped on a gun belt with one revolver, and the long handle of an Asian sword peeked up over his shoulder.

  “We have to get out of here,” Cyrus said. “And you have to do something with Niffy. He wants to murder the Brendan.”

  “Not murder,” Rupert said. “Execute.” He pointed at the monk waiting behind Cyrus. “We spoke about this.”

  Niffy nodded. “You’re here now, mate. Let’s get on with it.”

  “Wait …,” Cyrus said. “What?”

  “The blood is mine to shed,” Rupert said. “The life is mine to judge. Stay as close as you can and do as I say. If I say nothing, do nothing. Hang back. No questions.”

  Rupert moved quickly away between the statues and onto another rooftop. Niffy and Cyrus stayed with him, jogging along the peak. Rupert dropped between roof peaks into a wide va
lley densely packed with leaves. A tiny aircraft, the size and shape of a hang glider, was tied to a chimney. It had a single black cloth wing, anchored to sandbags at both tips, and a small aluminum frame below the center, holding one seat perched between what looked like a pair of small silver rockets.

  Cyrus stopped beside a small chimney steam-spewing stink.

  “I heard Sterling was back,” Rupert said. “He always had his rat routes in and out of this place. But I never thought his routes had wings.”

  Cyrus followed Rupert past the little flier, scrambled up a low wall, and stopped beside his Keeper. Niffy jumped up beside him.

  From where they stood, the roof sloped gently down all the way to the final edge, where the last row of statues posed in silence and glass skylights glowed yellow. Invisible in the distance, Cyrus could hear the dragonflies patrolling the rooftops for Rupert.

  The three of them crouched low and moved with quick soft steps down to the first glowing skylights. Rupert held up his hand, and Niffy and Cyrus hung back.

  Slowly, Rupert leaned out over the glass, looking down. A moment later, he moved to the next one. And the next. Finally, when he’d nearly reached the extreme corner of the building, he signaled for Cyrus and Niffy to come.

  Beside his Keeper, Cyrus looked down into the corner of a room where he had once faced the old Brendan, brother to Phoenix. Oliver had been there, too. Oliver, who had wanted friendship but refused to give any in return. Oliver, who had gotten much worse than he deserved. The unhealed slash on Cyrus’s forearm tingled slightly beneath its tight bandage. It rarely felt like anything anymore, and Arachne’s small bandage was smoother and more perfect than his real skin. Cyrus pushed away the memory. He could be sad for Oliver later.

  The same couch and chairs were in the Brendan’s rooms, beside the windows. And Bellamy Cook was pacing behind them. He was gnawing at his fingernails while he moved, spitting out the shards, talking, demanding, shouting, waving his arms, and tossing questions at three men who stood almost completely out of view. Cyrus couldn’t quite see, but he was willing to bet that all three men had gills on their necks. There were other men and women, too—the room was full.