Empire of Bones

by N. D. Wilson

  “Patrick!” Niffy was shouting. “No!”

  The monk was pulling at the coils. He was grabbing at the head, but he only managed to lift Cyrus and the snake both off the ground before dropping them again.

  The coils tightened and Cyrus’s ribs screamed and popped.

  Niffy found the tip of his snake’s tail and grabbed it hard. Cyrus watched him pinch the gold point, and he felt the coils loosen. As the monk backed away, the snake began to shrink and unwind. The head rose, and Cyrus stared into its green glowing eyes. The forked tongue snapped out like a whip and dragged down Cyrus’s face once more before Niffy tugged the animal all the way off him and into the grass.

  Cyrus sat up, coughing. He raised Patricia and his pained fingers to his lips.

  “It’s okay,” Cyrus whispered. “He’s gone. It’s okay.”

  Niffy was backing away through the grass, dragging the limp and shrinking snake like a golden garden hose. Finally, the patrik dangled from his hand, once again slender and small. It wound around Niffy’s arm and disappeared. Breathing hard, the monk looked up at Cyrus. He wiped sweat onto the sleeve of his robe, then began to laugh.

  “Funny to you?” Cyrus asked. “Your stupid snake almost killed me.”

  Niffy laughed harder. “You have a patrik! And she’s a girlie! Do you know what this means?”

  Cyrus stood up, tugging Patricia’s tight body down off his hand and onto his wrist.

  “Babies!” Niffy bellowed, raising his arms. “A brood of patriks!”

  Cyrus shook his head. “Not going to happen. No way.”

  Niffy seemed confused. He dropped his arms. “How’s that then? Why not?”

  “I don’t know if you were paying attention,” Cyrus said. “But she doesn’t like yours. Not even a little bit.” Cyrus shivered and rubbed at his face where the snake had tasted him. “And I’m not going to make Patricia do anything she doesn’t like.”

  “Patricia! Ooh, that’s lovely.” Niffy raised his own arm and whispered loudly to his sleeve. “Her name is Patricia!”

  Cyrus smiled despite himself. “Come on,” he said. Then he turned back to the zoo. Niffy whispered snatches of snaky poetry as he followed.

  The little outbuilding attached to the corner of the zoo was unlocked. The lights didn’t work, but the electricity was still on—two large refrigerators hummed in the darkness inside. Cyrus banged into large piles of stacked bags of grain, but he didn’t dare light up Patricia again. In the end, he managed to find the door he was looking for, and he tested the steel handle.

  Locked.

  Cyrus banged on it.

  “Jax!” he shouted. “James Axelrotter! Hey, Zoo Boy!”

  Nothing. Finally, he glanced back at Niffy.

  “Turn around,” he ordered. “I need Patricia and I don’t want your stupid snake seeing her again.”

  Niffy was probably grinning, but it was too dark in the building to tell. Cyrus heard the monk turn, whispering advice to his snake as he did.

  Cyrus recovered the key ring as quickly as he could and examined the door with Patricia’s silver light. She was tinier and fainter than he had ever seen her—barely longer than a big night crawler.

  There were three locks. The silver Solomon Key opened two of them, and the gold opened the third. More silver and gold. He wondered what color Patricia’s eggs would be. Or maybe she wouldn’t even lay eggs. Maybe she would give birth to her young like a rattlesnake.

  He pushed the door in slightly. The warm smell of zoo rolled through the dark crack to greet him.

  “Jax!” Cyrus whispered as loudly as he could. There were a lot of things in there that he didn’t want to wake up if they were actually sleeping.

  Cyrus stuck his head all the way into the room. Moonlight filtered down through high, dirty skylights, softening so much it barely reached the ground. Cyrus could just make out the tall waterfall at the extreme end. From this far away, it actually sounded more like wind than water.

  “Jax!”

  “I’m not leaving!” The voice was faint, echoing off the walls and the ceiling.

  “No one’s asking you to!” Cyrus shouted back. “Jax, it’s me! Rupert needs Leon!”

  Something distant crashed. Cyrus instinctively pulled back his head. This part of the zoo was inhabited by at least half of his nightmares. And Jax.

  “Are you inside?” Jax asked. “Don’t be inside. I’m turning the lights on, Cy. Watch yourself.”

  Cyrus slid his keys back onto Patricia and let her vanish around his wrist. As long as stupid Patrick was around, she wasn’t going on his neck.

  A switch popped loudly, and small spotlights buzzed to life above old black cages that ran down the length of the nearest wall.

  A bird shrieked. Something large and unseen and uncomfortably nearby snorted itself awake and then bellowed irritation.

  But Cyrus’s eyes were up, scanning the high steel rafters overgrown with canopies of hanging vines. He saw distant white wings flare in a roost, but no serpents dropped into flight. Nothing dove out of the roof or off the upper mezzanine of cages.

  Niffy squeezed into the doorway beside Cyrus. The monk’s odor was a dozen shades of rank, but he didn’t smell any worse than the zoo—or Cyrus, after the day they’d had.

  James Axelrotter moved into view. He was a small boy, wearing wrinkled clothes and sporting an overgrown head of bed-messed hair. And he was pedaling a bicycle welded into something that looked like a shark cage on wheels. A hammock was strung up inside the cage beside him, and a little canvas folding chair and a shelf were in one corner. Jax pedaled furiously, but the cage moved slowly as it drifted toward the door. Heavy bars were spaced well apart to handle any of the big beasts that might want to try for a Jax snack, but Cyrus could see a wire mesh woven between the bars that would more than deter flying vipers.

  “Strange,” Niffy said.

  Cyrus laughed. Strange didn’t begin to describe the only kid on the planet who got homesick when sleeping in a room that wasn’t filled with certified monsters. Jax hadn’t lasted more than a week on the run with the Smiths, away from the transmortal beasties in the Crypto wing of the zoo he’d grown up tending. He had been unable to sleep, and spent his days alternating between incredible grouchiness and designing the bicycle cage in a notebook. Once Cyrus had promised him that he could go back to Ashtown and still be a for-real Polygoner and friend of the Smiths, the kid was as good as gone. The Boones had managed to arrange a lift back for him.

  The bicycle cage and its kid engine approached at about the speed of a granny in a walker. Jax stopped fifty feet away, breathing hard, resting his hands on his knees.

  “Cage looks good,” Cyrus said. “Nice work. Can you shift gears?”

  Jax shook his head, struggling to speak. “Perhaps, when I’m older,” he gasped. “But with my adolescent stature …”

  Cyrus smiled. Adolescent stature was generous. Jax was small and, short of sorcery, always would be. But he was also crazy smart, and while he could be emotional, he was almost impossible to motivate with fear. On his home turf, he was a sharp and very verbose rock. Growing up with flying vipers did that for a kid.

  “You look like you’ve been swallowed and regurgitated by something unpleasant,” Jax said. “And burned,” he added. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your acquaintance.”

  “Brother Boniface Brosnan,” Cyrus said. “He’s a friend.” He glanced at Niffy. “Sort of.”

  Niffy grinned and nodded. “Cheers, mate. Love a full tour of the facility and all that—some other time, yeah?—but I’ve been sent to fetch a giant ferocious turtle. Is this where I apply?”

  Jax began to pedal again, but slowly. The cage inched forward.

  “Leon is sleeping. What do you want with him?”

  “Rupert wants him to play guard dog at the courtyard entry. Ashtown is awaiting an invasion and is short on defenders. Good help being impossible to find, Rupert desires an angry turtle.”

  “Leon isn’t trained,” Jax
said. “He wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Let’s not worry about that,” Cyrus said. “Let’s worry about doing what Rupert wants. Can you get Leon up to the courtyard?”

  Jax nodded. “Yes, but only with a massive quantity of cheese. And after that much cheese, his stomach will be quite upset and he’ll be incredibly irritable. More than he already is.”

  “Brilliant,” Niffy said. “Irritation is ideal.”

  “Right,” Cyrus said. “Great. Do we need to get cheese?”

  Jax shook his head. “I have a stockpile of old nasty stuff. He likes it fuzzy and rotten.”

  At the far end of the room beneath the waterfall, Cyrus saw a car-size shadow move. Leon, the centuries-old snapping turtle, rose out of a pool and smacked onto the tile floor in a turtle-and-water avalanche.

  Niffy swore.

  “I know,” said Cyrus.

  “After the turtle, Rupert wants us in the Galleria,” Niffy said quietly. He looked at Cyrus. “I’m telling you now in case I die.”

  Leon was bigger than some cars, his spiny shell was taller than Cyrus, his spiny tail could have sent a buffalo tumbling, and the beaked mouth in his massive, rotten-pumpkin-ugly head could bite a man in half. But the turtle was able to focus on only one thing at a time, and his favorite thing to focus on was cheese.

  Cheese crumbs led him to the big wooden doors.

  The zoo exploded in noisy chaos when the doors were opened and the night air rolled in. Striped bears leapt out of cages. Jaculus Vipers swirled in the rafters and slapped down onto the floor, hissing at the sight of freedom, but Leon merely moseyed. He dragged his bulk through the doorway with his asymmetrical nostrils snorting at the ground, searching for lumps of stinky cheese.

  Niffy screamed, slapping the turtle. Cyrus shouted. And then Jax jumped out of his bicycle cage, smacked a lump of cheese directly in Leon’s face, and then jerked it away before he lost his arm. He hurled the cheese outside.

  Leon became a snorting volcano of shell and lashing spiny tail. He cleared the doors, and Jax barely managed to shut them before something large and snarling slammed into the other side.

  The rest was relatively easy. Jax climbed up onto Leon’s back, avoiding the shell spikes as the turtle heaved his weight from leg to leg. Then Jax began lobbing chunks of cheese out ahead of him. Cyrus hopped onto Leon’s huge tail and ran up it, grabbing the scaly spines, and scrambled up to sit next to his small friend. Niffy followed the same way, but he refused to sit.

  With the hard shell rocking beneath him like the deck of a reptilian ship, Cyrus couldn’t help but smile—even with the planes still trailing away as the panicked residents of Ashtown fled. The smell of doom wasn’t as strong as the smell of turtle.

  By the time Leon had reached the great courtyard, he was wheezing and tired. He paused by the towering sculptures that rose out of the fountain in the center of the lawn and shoved his head into the pool, bubbling furiously.

  The courtyard was empty. Cyrus stood up on the shell of the gurgling turtle, looking at the big stairs and pillars that led to the heart of Ashtown. The tall wooden door was open, and yellow light flowed out around the shape of Rupert Greeves, standing alone.

  Two more small planes whined up into the night sky, one after the other, wingtips blinking. Ashtown was bleeding out.

  “Okay, Leon,” Cyrus said, tapping his foot lightly. “Let’s go.”

  Leon looked up and geysered water out of his nostrils, and Jax lobbed a piece of cheese toward the big open door even as Rupert Greeves turned away.

  When the exhausted turtle had finally climbed the stairs, Cyrus saw that Rupert had looped a heavy chain around the base of one of the pillars. The chain ended in a thick belt strap. Leon collapsed onto his belly and shut his eyes. Niffy hopped off and walked into the bright hallway. Cyrus helped Jax cinch the leather strap tight onto Leon’s baggy back leg, as thick and coarse as an elephant’s but with webbed feet and banana-long claws. Leaving Leon panting, they hopped over the turtle’s tail and jogged into the glowing hall.

  The Galleria was virtually empty. After an empty acre of wooden chairs, no more than fifty people were scattered through seats in the front. There were white-haired heads that belonged to Sages, hunched in clusters. There were staff members, terrified and young, scattered in bunches. Big Ben Sterling stood against a wall with his arms crossed. Young men and women—Journeymen and Explorers—sat upright in the front rows. All of them had their eyes forward, focused on Rupert Greeves.

  Cyrus jogged down the center aisle between the chairs, flanked by Niffy and Jax. His Keeper looked up at him, his face burned and battered, his eyes quiet with sadness. Cyrus had expected defiance in Rupert Greeves. He had expected a battle roar and confident, quick steps and surety of purpose. Rupert was still wearing all black—cinched shorts and pocketed shirt, tight sleeves and leggings. His hands were on his hips, and he let his head sag forward between his broad shoulders.

  Rupert Greeves looked heavy with death, like a man at his mother’s graveside, like a man beside a deathbed. The Order was dying.

  Cyrus stopped. Jax slipped into a chair. Niffy sat down across the aisle.

  Cyrus stood in the middle of the aisle, all in black himself, counterpoint to his Keeper.

  Rupert rolled his head slowly, and then looked up at the vaulted roof. His voice was low.

  “Father of our Lord, vouchsafe to bless this grave in which we are about to place the bodies of thy servants.”

  Cyrus looked around. He had heard those words before. Was this a funeral? There were no bodies. And then cold realization drained through him. There were bodies. About fifty of them, sitting in chairs.

  Rupert looked at the sparse crowd. His voice was rough.

  “The fallen Brendan,” he said.

  “Hail,” one voice replied quietly.

  The crowd was silent.

  Rupert exhaled slowly. Then he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. Cyrus knew his Keeper well enough to know that Rupert had chosen his course.

  “You,” Rupert said, “few and faithful, Sages, Keepers, Explorers, Journeymen.” He looked up at the back rows. “Staff. The Order, in her decay, does not deserve you. She does not merit your courage, your blood, your lives. She has betrayed you, and yet you are faithful. I, Rupert Greeves, Blood Avenger, standing for this moment in the Order on behalf of our older brother, Brendan, thank you. You are my brothers and my sisters. You are my betters. I am ashamed that these halls I love cannot defend you. I am ashamed that you who are willing to remain to face our Order’s ancient enemies and the terrors of her darkest years must see such disarray.” Blinking, Rupert looked from face to face. “The dross has burned away. You are the gold, the true treasure of Ashtown. And now the gold goes beneath the hammer.”

  Cyrus heard a girl sob. He looked over to see little Hillary Drake, green eyes and curly hair, sniffing into her apron. She was the last of an old family, now unable even to meet the standards for Acolytes. She wasn’t here out of courage. She had nowhere else to go.

  Rupert cleared his throat and continued. “The assets of the Ashtown Estate belong to those who chose to remain, and they are to be used in the preservation of this Order. What you carry away in your hands may be the only seeds of Ashtown to survive these final days. You must choose wisely and quickly. Sages, gather volumes. Staff, assist them. Keepers, choose from the collections. Explorers, the Estate planes must be prepared to leave with your load of refugees and relics for the African Carthage Estate in four hours. Journeymen, we will not leave our dead unburied. Our Brothers of the cloth still lie in the chapel where they were murdered.”

  The small crowd was restless.

  “We didn’t stay just so we could leave,” a thin boy in the front said. Cyrus didn’t know him, but he agreed.

  “You stayed,” Rupert said, “to preserve and defend the Order of Brendan, and that is what you will do.” He held out his hands, palms up. “Members, rise.”

  Everyone in the front ros
e. The staff, Niffy, and Jax remained seated. Rupert looked back at the nervous groundskeepers, porters, and housekeepers.

  “Rise,” Rupert said. “Courage is your only qualification. You are truer members than all who fled.”

  Even Hillary Drake stood.

  “The Order entrusts her remains to you. Regrow her greatness if you can.” He sighed, and for a moment, his formality fell away from him. “Whatever gold and silver is still in the vaults should be divided equally among you before you go. Work quickly, and as fairly as you can.”

  Small gasps and whispers did laps through the staff. Cyrus suddenly understood why Sterling had stayed. Or he thought he did. But the big cook’s face was grim.

  Rupert drew himself back up, raised his hands, and shifted his voice.

  “Flesh and blood of Brendan, the storm grows,” Rupert said. He was beginning the chant of departing. Cyrus had only seen it used a few times, and always at funerals. It had once been meant for earthly treks, but now most members just signed a book and slipped away without any ritual.

  “Let us fill our sails,” the crowd replied. The voices were scattered and uneasy.

  “The storm grows!” Rupert shouted.

  “Let us spread our wings!” the crowd said, and this time their voices were in time. Even Sterling had shouted out the reply. He was no longer leaning against the wall, and his big fists were clenched.

  “The sea rages!” Rupert said.

  “Let our ships till her waves!”

  “Flesh and blood of Brendan,” Rupert said, “let us give …”

  “And not count the cost!” the crowd shouted, and Cyrus with them.

  “Let us fight …”

  “And not heed our wounds!”

  “Let us toil …,” Rupert said, and Cyrus could see that his Keeper’s eyes were wet.

  “And seek no rest,” Cyrus said. He forgot the crowd. He looked at Rupert, and Rupert looked at him.

  “Let us labor,” Rupert said.

  “And seek no reward,” said Cyrus.

  “Until our dust is dust,” said Rupert.

  “And our ash is ash,” said Cyrus.