The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus shivered. He had to do something, had been trying to do something. But even he could see that his efforts to qualify for Explorer were usually distractions when he felt penned in. Would Phoenix really be any more frightened of Cyrus the Explorer than he had been of Cyrus the Acolyte? Phoenix wasn’t even frightened of Rupert.

  Cyrus hopped over a complicated tile map-tangle in the floor labeled Sub Aquagium Parisii. Aquagium? It didn’t ring a bell.

  “Tigs?”

  “Sewers of Paris,” she said simply. “You’ve scraped through one level of Latin. You should know that.”

  “You should know that I wouldn’t.”

  The three of them passed the loud dining hall and wound their way through the hallways. They passed photographs and strange animal heads and maps and guns and swords and battered wooden propellers until the hallway broadened and they finally reached the ancient leather boat of Brendan on its pedestal and the long dragon skin on the wall. Rupert strode past them to the great doors—the huge wooden doors that opened onto the courtyard lawn of Ashtown. Rupert opened a small wicket door on the right side and ducked out.

  Cyrus and Antigone hopped through after him, and a moment later, they were both blinking in the smoldering heat.

  The sun was already low, but the humid air held the warmth like … like a baked potato, Cyrus thought. A potato he had to live in. He groaned and shut his eyes. His skin already felt greasy.

  “I don’t mind it,” Antigone said. “Better than the cold.”

  Cyrus watched Rupert move down the stone stairs toward the huge courtyard lawn flanked by hulking stone buildings. In the center of the lawn, the towering fountain was steaming as it churned. All over the lawn, in tight regimented rows, Acolytes were erecting canvas tents.

  “What’s going on?” Cyrus asked. “Did I miss something?”

  “Preparations,” a voice said behind Cyrus. He wheeled around. Dennis Gilly stood beside the big wooden doors, sweating in his porter’s suit and the bowler hat he had tied on with a ribbon beneath his chin. He wasn’t nearly as pimply as when they’d first met him, but he’d hardly grown in the last year. “Mr. Greeves has ordered all Acolytes out of quarters. The staff are expecting a great number of guests who require quarters in isolation.”

  “Smiths!” Rupert shouted. He was already striding away along a gravel walk.

  “See ya, Dennis,” Antigone said. Dennis nodded and touched his sweat-slick nose.

  Cyrus and Antigone jogged down the stairs and ran to catch up to Rupert. Two Acolytes shrieked past, laughing and wrestling over an old bloated football.

  “Rupe,” said Cyrus. “When Gil was storming out of Mom’s room, he said he wouldn’t play football again. What did he mean? Why would he have to play football?”

  Rupert smiled. They were nearing the shade of a covered stone walkway. “After that whole scene, that’s what you’re wondering about?”

  “No,” said Cyrus. “I want to know why the courtyard is all of a sudden a huge campground, and I want to know if more Gils are going to show up, and I want to know what Arachne’s deal is, and I want to talk you into taking me on your next trek. But if I bring any of that up, you’ll probably just tell me to shut up and wait till we’re in our rooms.”

  Rupert laughed. “All right, then. Money is complicated for a transmortal. Think about it. They tend to have the needs of mortals, but without the mortality. Just because they don’t die doesn’t mean they’re wealthy enough to feed themselves and clothe themselves and shelter themselves forever. Mortals retire when they think they have enough money to care for themselves until death. But when there is no death, there’s never enough money. Gil recently lost a great deal of his worth, and in the recent past, whenever he’s run out of money—all the way out of money—he’s made up a new identity and played professional football. He’s actually in the Hall of Fame under two different names. Apparently he doesn’t want to do it again. It’s usually best if he waits a decade or so between careers.”

  “Bizarre,” Cyrus said.

  Rupert laughed. “You have no idea.”

  Their three sets of feet stopped crunching gravel and began scuffing along paving stones. The shade wasn’t any cooler than the sun.

  “I don’t care about football,” Antigone said. “And I don’t care about Gil, as long as he stays away from us and from Mom. I want to know why the sign of the Smiths is three heads.”

  Rupert stopped at a battered door set into a rough stone wall. For Cyrus, opening that door always took two hands and a braced foot. Rupert jerked on an iron ring with one hand and the door squealed open. “The three severed heads?” Rupert asked. “Who told you about them? Did you see it in a book?”

  “Severed?” Antigone grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”

  Inside the doorway, stairs curled up in a spiral. “Yes, severed,” said Rupert, smiling. “It’s a grim crest and a famous one. The Order expunged it almost a century ago, but it’s still in all the books and stories. Expunging history is harder than some committees might think.” Rupert gestured for Antigone to go first, and she began to climb. Cyrus followed. The stairs were as dank as ever, but beautifully cool once the door banged shut behind them. Rupert’s voice echoed in the stairwell.

  “For the last forty years or so, crests and seals haven’t mattered much in Ashtown. There were fewer great expeditions to be had and less pride in Expeditionary Badges, less pride in what remained of the old families, and less rivalry between Continent and Continent, Estate and Estate. Now one tends to see the symbol of the Order—the ship of Brendan—or the crests of trainers on the chests of paying pupils. But there are those who still keep the old crests close.”

  Cyrus reached the top and stopped in the long narrow hall that led to their rooms. There were windows, but only the size of arrow slits. The walls were cool bare stone. Antigone was waiting.

  “What was the point?” she asked when Rupert reached the top. “And why did we have three severed heads?”

  Rupert followed her down the hall. Cyrus trailed behind. “The point,” he said, “was pride in one’s family, in one’s Estate and Continent and achievements, et cetera. People who understood could look at your badges and crests and they would know who you were, where you were from, what you had done, and—frequently—what your ancestors had done. Your three severed heads became the Smith crest four centuries ago as a result of John Smith and his … achievements.”

  At the end of the hall, Antigone pushed open a little door.

  Rupert laughed. “You don’t keep it locked?”

  Cyrus shook his head. “Not usually. There’s nothing in there worth taking.”

  Antigone stopped in the doorway and looked up at Rupert. “What is the crest of the Greeveses? Is your family old, too?”

  Rupert looked from Antigone to Cyrus. After a moment, he sighed. Then he began to unbutton his worn safari shirt.

  “You two,” he said, “and only you two, get me to yammering like an old nan on her front porch.”

  Cyrus stared, confused, as the big man stripped off his shirt. The tangled web of scars on his muscled chest was beyond sorting out. His left shoulder was dotted with what looked like bullet wounds—or maybe teeth marks—and his right side had a large old-looking T scar just above his hip.

  “Wow,” said Antigone. “What are those—”

  “No,” said Rupert. “No questions.” He jerked his safari shirt inside out, and then slid his arms back through the sleeves. Now there were patches on both shoulders—three on his right and one on his left. He slapped his right shoulder. At the top, there was a black medieval ship in a yellow circle.

  “The Order of Brendan,” he said. Then he tapped another round patch below it—silver chains knotted into the shape of a Celtic cross inside a green circle. “The old emblem of the Ashtown Estate.” Beneath the two circles, there was a long, thin red band. Inside it, a golden dragon with six wings was roaring. Rupert traced it with his finger. “That tells you that I am the Bloo
d Avenger for my Estate—First Avengel for the Order of Brendan.” He turned and tapped the lone patch on his left shoulder—a silver chess knight with eagle wings, flying inside a dark blue shield. “The symbol my great-grandfather adopted as the sign of Greeves.” He tugged his shirt back off, inverting it again. Then he slipped it on with the patches against his skin and began to button it up. Cyrus and Antigone were staring at him. He smiled and nodded at the doorway. “Get in there.”

  When William Skelton died in the firefight at the Archer Motel, he had already made Cyrus and Antigone his Acolytes and heirs. But they hadn’t been allowed to move right into his old rooms. They’d been stowed in the Polygon until they’d made Journeyman, and that hadn’t happened until the New Year. Anything would have been an upgrade from sleeping in a crypt and walking on planks above hungry Whip Spiders, but they’d expected something more from the rooms of the notorious and wealthy outlaw.

  There were five rooms in all. The largest was a long central room with a stone fireplace at the end, two windows, and a moth-eaten Persian rug on the floor. The walls had been decorated with black-and-white photographs of Skelton’s bone tattoos, all of which Antigone had quickly shoved into a small closet—only because Cyrus hadn’t let her throw them away. There had also been one threadbare armchair. Now there was one threadbare armchair and a wooden chair stolen from the dining hall.

  Every corner of the tiny bathroom was covered with tiny white tile, and every white tile had been covered with a filthy gray sedimentary skin. Antigone had scrubbed the place with bleach every day for a week. Now the tiles glistened like fresh false teeth, but the grout between them was a crumbly and rotten set of gums. The shower occasionally drooled a chilly trickle and occasionally blasted a fleet of sizzling liquid lasers that could blister skin. And the toilet sang like a dying bullfrog in the night. But it was all still better than the Polygon.

  Off the central room, there had been one empty bedroom with one window, a moldy curtain, and absolutely nothing else. Now the room held two hammocks, slung in opposite corners. Cyrus had wanted a hammock. Antigone had wanted to sleep anywhere that wasn’t the floor. Beneath each hammock, there were cardboard boxes that held what little the two had been able to salvage from the Archer. Cyrus’s clothes were piled into another box. Antigone’s were hanging in the little closet.

  The remaining three rooms were unusable. The first was an active volcano of old boxes. Crates and cartons and chests and bins had at one time been stacked from floor to ceiling, but those stacks had slumped into each other and become a monolithic heap of dust. They called it Dump Number One and never bothered with it. The next room held a pile of exactly the same size and shape, but made entirely of books. Cyrus called it the library or Dump Number Two. Antigone called it the Book Dump.

  They didn’t know what was in the last room, because they had never been able to open the door. Cyrus’s silver Solomon Key had released the lock, and the knob had turned easily. But the door had merely wiggled in place. And it was a completely interior room, so there was no chance of using a ladder to break in through a window.

  Rupert Greeves stepped into the long central room and looked around. On the timber mantel above the fireplace, there was a small ebony box, left to the Smiths by William Skelton. Leaning against it was a battered book titled How to Breed Your Leatherbacks. Hanging by a string from the ceiling was a spherical rice paper Chinese lantern with a map of the world inked onto it, and oceans full of scrawls written in a language Cyrus and Antigone had not been able to identify.

  “And the two of you,” Rupert said, “have done half a notch more than nothing.”

  “Hey!” Antigone stepped forward. “Look in the bathroom and you won’t say that.” She crossed her arms. “Besides, what were we supposed to do?”

  Rupert looked around at the bare walls. “Furniture? Art? Lamps wouldn’t hurt a bit.”

  Cyrus looked at his sister. He knew she hated the rooms. He knew she desperately wanted to overhaul everything. Antigone sniffed and tucked back her hair.

  “How?” she asked. “Rupe, how? We don’t have a car. And if we did, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave. We don’t have money—Horace says there’s barely enough still in the estate to cover our Order dues. You’ve been gone forever. Dan’s in California. How would we do anything?”

  Antigone’s eyes were actually wet. She wiped them quickly. Rupert looked stunned.

  “Do you think we want to live in a place like this?” Antigone asked. “ ’Cause we don’t. We don’t come in till we have to sleep, and we leave as soon as we wake up.”

  “You do,” said Cyrus quietly. “Sometimes I do, too. It depends on what the shower is doing.”

  Rupert’s big shoulders sagged. “Antigone, I’m sorry.”

  Antigone wiped her eyes again. “I can fly an airplane, but I can’t drive to a furniture store. And if I did, I would have to rob it.”

  Rupert stepped forward and cautiously slid his arm around Antigone’s shoulders, patting awkwardly. She was tiny next to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Rupert said again. He looked at Cyrus. “I haven’t been a good Keeper to either of you.”

  Cyrus shrugged. The whole scene was too uncomfortable for him.

  “It’s stupid,” Antigone said, stepping back. “It’s not your fault. You’re not our dad. And you’re not Dan. And chasing Phoenix is a lot more important than helping us. I’m still not used to having no one, you know, in charge of us.”

  “Forgive me,” Rupert said. “Truly. And forgive me again, because I’m about to make things much worse.”

  “What?” Cyrus said. “What do you mean?”

  Rupert dropped onto the ratty rug and crossed his legs. “Sit. There are unpleasant things you need to know.”

  Antigone silently lowered herself to the floor. Cyrus thumped down beside her.

  “First,” Rupert said, “I haven’t found Phoenix. I haven’t come close, not in a long while. The transmortals have become the more immediate problem. They’re always difficult, but they tend to live in small enough pods to keep them manageable. Now they’re fast becoming a bloody great herd. And that herd is coming here.” He raised his hands defensively. “Please know that I was already sorry to do this, and even sorrier now, but for the foreseeable future, you are not to leave these rooms unless you are with me.”

  “What?” Antigone’s mouth hung open. “You’re joking. Why?”

  “What do you mean ‘foreseeable’?” Cyrus said.

  “I mean foreseeable,” said Rupert. “Indefinite. For the time being. Until further notice. In addition to the transmortals, members of the O of B are flying into Ashtown from all over the globe to remember the last Brendan and elect a new one. When they have, he will name a new Avengel.”

  “That’s why there’s a campout in the courtyard?” Cyrus asked.

  Rupert nodded. “Right. And that’s why you’ll be in here.”

  “That all sounds like craziness,” Antigone said. “But I don’t see what it has to do with us getting locked up.”

  Rupert exhaled. His eyes drifted up to the window. Cyrus turned, glancing back at the age-rippled glass panes behind him. Then he looked back at Rupert. The Avengel’s dark eyes locked with his own. Cyrus didn’t need to be told. It was obvious.

  “The transmortals,” Cyrus said, thinking of Gil. “You’re worried because they’re unhappy about the tooth.”

  Rupert scratched his jaw. When he spoke, his voice was slow and cautious. “I worry because your name is Smith. Because you were the first person in generations to kill one of the transmortals—something they disapprove of in even the most extreme cases, and something that your family has an historical habit of doing. I worry because you are the one who held the tooth and lost it to Phoenix, who has now done some transmortal killing of his own. I am worried because the transmortals are more than unhappy. They are angry—with me, with the Order, and especially with you. Those who have treaties with the Order will hope to influence the election o
f the Brendan and the selection of the next Avengel. They do not forget, and they do not forgive.”

  Antigone groaned. “I’m so tired of everyone only blaming Cyrus. If it weren’t for Cyrus, do you know how many people would be dead in this place?”

  “Yes,” Rupert said. “I do. But the transmortals blame me as well, and they are right to. The responsibility for all that happened lies with me.” He knuckled his swollen cheek. “Phoenix has begun hunting them. You asked where I was? Egypt, Greece, and then France. Dozens of transmortals are missing—on the run, taken, or killed. We only found three bodies, but three is enough to start the stampede.” He looked from Cyrus to Antigone. “Mortals like us live with fear, with the certainty of our own eventual deaths—some more boldly than others. Not so the transmortals. The undying live with boredom, with apathy, with love or anger or hate, any number of emotions. But never fear. Fear and death are two sides of the same coin, and death has been well behind them for centuries. To have the Reaper’s Blade reemerge now, and in the hand of an enemy? To have friends struck down? Fear roars and they cannot control it. It rules over them like so many hunted animals. And men like Gilgamesh are very dangerous when afraid.”

  Cyrus exhaled slowly. “So what are we going to do?”

  Rupert smiled grimly. “We are going to keep you in your rooms as long as we can. I am going to do what I can to calm the coming herd.”

  Antigone looked around the dingy room. “Does it have to be in here? I hate it like this. Could you at least get me some paint?”

  Rupert stood slowly. Cyrus scrambled up beside him, but Antigone stayed on the floor.

  “I’ll come when I can,” Rupert said. “Phoenix has been even more fox-cunning than I’d expected. He’s diverted me and managed to threaten Ashtown even while he hides. And my own Acolytes are woefully unprepared.” He shook his head. “I’d hoped there’d be time this fall for a stronger traditional training regimen for my two Smiths, but immediate danger creates immediate needs, and soon enough the two of you may be fighting to survive outside of these walls.” Suddenly, he smiled. “But I have a card to play, no longer hidden in my sleeve. Arachne will be staying with you and working with you in ways that only she can. Some Keepers might object—fallaciously—to her unique skills, but I’m in no mood to care. You will do as she says without question. After dark tonight, if she thinks it’s safe, you can walk the green with her. Tomorrow morning, the planes will really begin to arrive and you’ll be locked in tight. I’ll be by when I can.”