The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  The door banged shut as Jeb and Diana left. Rupert was talking to Jax.

  Cyrus pulled his arm up and studied the soft black dripping creature with its bundle of suckered eel arms swathed around his fingers. The squid’s head quivered and pulsed like a black heart, and its large fishy eye searched the room and settled on Cyrus’s face.

  “Cy?” Antigone asked. Cyrus began to unpeel tentacles until he found the beak. No red dots. Black. Sharp. Hard. But attached to soft rubbery tissue. Like a parrot crossed with a lung.

  Cyrus raised it to his face.

  Antigone gagged and turned around. Cyrus held his breath, pretended that he was dreaming, and slid the beak carefully into his mouth. It clicked open and shut—up and down—pressing against his tongue, banging against the roof of his mouth. Cold. Wet. Salty.

  And then, in a flash, the squid latched on.

  Tentacles lashed around the back of Cyrus’s head and neck, pulling the body tight against his face. The squid’s body covered his nose. Legs whipped up over his eyes, grabbing on to his forehead.

  Cyrus flailed, panicking. Antigone was screaming.

  “No! No! Calm down!” The voice belonged to Jax. He was slapping Cyrus’s hands. “Be careful or you’ll kill it!”

  Cyrus couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t see. And then two hands carefully worked the tentacles off his eyes and parted them around his nose. Through his nostrils, he pulled in a long, slow, squid-smelling breath. Jax was smiling at him. Antigone stood behind him with her eyes wide and both hands over her mouth.

  “Mr. Greeves asked me to help you for a minute. He’ll be right back. Now get your face in the water or she’ll die.”

  Jax snatched another squid out of the bucket, parted its tentacles, and turned to face Antigone.

  Cyrus’s heart was racing. Breathing through his nose, trying to ignore the oppressive living mask clinging to his face and the clicking parrot beak in his mouth, he sat next to the open square in the glass floor and lowered his bare legs into the water. It wasn’t cold. He slid in up to his armpits.

  Antigone was sobbing behind him. And then suddenly, the sobbing stopped.

  Cyrus raised his arms, the water closed above him, and he dropped into the maze. The water burned his eyes a little. It was salted. Why did that surprise him? Immediately, the squid beak clacked out a cluster of bubbles in his mouth. They tasted like—well, like squid burp. He held them in his cheeks. How was this supposed to work? He exhaled a little from his nose, and then replaced the space in his lungs with the bubbles.

  Blinking, he stretched out his hands and felt the glass sides of the square tunnel around him. He needed to get farther down, and there wasn’t enough room to fold and dive now. He should have come in headfirst.

  Antigone’s feet clipped him on the head, and she shot in next to him, pinning him against the wall. She didn’t seem too upset, but everything was water-blurry. They were tight enough together that their squids were touching.

  Antigone pointed down, and then slid herself past him. Cyrus’s squid trickled out another bubble belch. Then he pressed his hands against the walls and followed his sister deeper into the darker water.

  Years ago, in the California house, when his father had been alive and his mother had been awake, Antigone had dared Cyrus to wriggle into a tight sleeping bag headfirst, turn around in the end, and come back out. She had raced him over and over again, and every single time, when the space had gotten tight and hot and sweaty, and he had gotten stuck half bent in the end, he had kicked the zipper open in panic, usually shouting.

  Now Antigone had somehow twisted herself head down, and there was no way Cyrus could keep up with her unless he did, too. And he was inches taller and half as bendy.

  She was already exploring side passages in the maze and there was very little light. He was losing sight of her.

  He tucked his head and began to fold, scraping and scrabbling at the glass sides. With his chin tucked to his chest, his jaw dug into the keys dangling on Patricia around his neck. He hoped he wasn’t crushing her. He wondered what she thought of the squid. If she thought the squid was trying to suffocate him, the little snake might get big and angry, and the squid would get dead. Cyrus would be stuck in the bottom of the cube with no burps to breathe.

  Cyrus kicked and twisted and banged the back of his head. It was working. Unlike the inside of a sleeping bag, these sides were slick. And unlike the sleeping bag, he wouldn’t be able to kick his way out if it didn’t work.

  With a sudden burst and two heels cracked against a wall, Cyrus did it. He was head down. He kicked forward. Where was his sister?

  Dark water. Thick glass walls and more dark water. Rupert could turn on lights if he wanted, but that would be less real. The deeper you dove, the darker it got. The squid bubbled and Cyrus swallowed the hand-me-down air instead of inhaling. Uncomfortable lumps sat in his chest.

  And he still couldn’t see a thing—not without goggles. The salt water was blinding. An opening passed by in the wall. He pushed backward and squinted into it. Blurry darkness. He pulled himself down. And down. Had she really turned off somewhere without making sure that he was behind her? He was starting to worry, and worrying made him angry. The beak in his mouth released a barrage of bubbles and then nipped at the inside of his cheek.

  He didn’t notice. His head thumped against glass. He was at the bottom of the cube. He had to turn, but he couldn’t see anything. There should at least be a glow through the glass. The lights had been on in the room below the cube when Rupert had brought them through and climbed the stairs.

  Patricia. He’d used his little undying snake for light before he’d known what else she could do. Cyrus reached up and slid his fingers beneath her soft body. Careful not to let his key ring drop off his living necklace, he slid her tail out of her mouth. Immediately, the water around him flickered silver. Patricia had become visible. He held her out, watching her strain to pop her tail back in her mouth and disappear. The key ring dangled from her middle. Her tiny green eyes sparked irritation as she snatched her tail and disappeared, but only for a moment. Cyrus wrangled her tail free again, the silver body appeared, and Cyrus popped his thumb in her mouth. Her body wound tight around his fist, pinning the key ring against the back of his hand. Then Cyrus looked around.

  Down a tunnel to his left, Cyrus could see Antigone gliding toward him.

  And on the other side of the thick glass, faintly cast in the silver light, he could see a face. Cyrus’s heart stopped. The face was large, bearded, grinning. A huge six-fingered hand reached up and stuck a tiny red salamander onto the glass. It didn’t move, but flames flickered around its body. The other six-fingered hand raised a huge sledgehammer.

  Cyrus understood.

  “No,” he said. And with that word, the squid dropped off his face and slid away. Cyrus grabbed his sister and shoved her up the tunnel. He didn’t need to push twice. Twisting, kicking off the bottom, he clawed up through the water after her.

  The blast wasn’t behind him. It was everywhere. The water jolted and compressed his ribs, his head. His heart skipped and twitched inside him. Half-conscious, ears ringing into deafness, Cyrus drifted into a wall. Something beneath him was cracking. Thick glass was grinding its teeth. And then everything around him fell.

  He was inside a water volcano erupting straight down. He was in the middle of a falling lake. Water slammed him against stone. Existence unplugged.

  eight

  EXODUS

  RUPERT GREEVES WAS RUNNING toward the bells. He was running toward the biggest fight of his life—a fight with Bellamy Cook of the Barrier Estate, duly named Brendan. Bellamy Cook, the transmortals’ puppet. The Sages were old and timid, and Rupert had wasted his breath singing the praises of Alan Livingstone to them each in turn. They had chosen the path that would make tomorrow quiet. But Rupert knew the coming months would roar. Now he would have to fight with the Order itself. He was ready. It was long overdue. He should have fought years ago when L
awrence Smith was removed. He should have fought when corruption and rot first enabled Phoenix to riddle the O of B with his influence.

  Rupert pushed open a door. Two more long hallways and he’d be outside the Galleria, facing the end of the life he had always known.

  And then the ground shivered.

  Rupert Greeves pressed his hand against the wall and froze. Something was very wrong.

  The bells were forgotten. Rupert Greeves turned back and ran. His fight would wait.

  When Rupert banged through the door into the room above the water cube, Jax was lying in a puddle, blinking.

  “It just, something …” Jax sat up and pointed at the labyrinth glass in the floor. It was pale without the water beneath it, cloudy and cracked. “Water launched up the holes. Then it was all gone.”

  Rupert peered down through the empty dripping walls of the maze. A jagged hole gaped in the bottom at least four feet across. Turning quickly, Rupert raced for the spiral stairs.

  “Wait!” Jax was on his feet. “What should I do?”

  “Pray your friends are still alive!” Rupert said, one hand on the rail. “Grab what you need and get to Skelton’s rooms as fast as you can.”

  Ducking his head, Rupert Greeves raced down and around the stairs until he stood in darkness at the bottom. Water lapped around his ankles. A current was pulling at his feet, sucking out into the hallway. It was draining into the lower levels.

  “Cyrus! Antigone!”

  Rupert drew his long revolver and splashed toward the door.

  Cyrus opened his eyes. He was floating, staring up at low gray stone vaults. He knew that ceiling. He was in the Polygon.

  Someone was holding him up by the shoulder, dragging him. Cyrus twisted, just glimpsing Nolan above him. Then his face bobbed underwater. Choking, he threw up salt water.

  The hand on his shoulder became two hands, and he was suddenly pulled out of the water and thrown facedown onto a soiled mattress. He was on the rotten top bunk of one of the Polygon’s old white metal beds.

  Coughing and spewing, he pushed himself up. Nolan was splashing away. Antigone was on the mattress beside him, lying on her back with one arm flung out, skin white, chest heaving, a bloody goose egg on her forehead.

  “Tigs,” Cyrus said. He patted her cheek. “Antigone!” He glanced around the room.

  The Polygon was under at least four feet of water. The plank walkways were floating. White Whip Spiders bobbed around the surface in mats. Nolan stood facing the door, up to his ribs in the water, his wet pale skin looking like the pearly flesh of some strange sea creature.

  The wooden door to the Polygon was gone, blown off its hinges by the flood. Gil stood just inside the empty doorway. The skin on his face was charred as black as his beard. His shirt had burned away, revealing his massive chest and shoulders, carpeted with dark hair but tiger-striped with old bald scars.

  He was carrying the sledgehammer, but the iron on one side was mushroomed, molten and steaming, reforged by the salamander explosion. His bull eyes were red and wild, and his thick purple lips were curled back in a snarl.

  He waded into the room, the water lapping at his hips.

  “Little thief! Serpent! Coiled in your hole! You will not steal from me again. Give them to me now or I will crush your brittle skull.”

  Nolan’s shoulders tensed. Blue veins bulged and snaked on his bare arms. His voice was cold—blizzard quiet, blizzard angry, carrying a thousand years of edges. “Flood my home? Threaten my friends? Back away, Gilgamesh. You know this snake cannot die. I will strike. And strike. And strike. I saw Maxi die.”

  “Maxi was a fool,” Gil said. He eyed the pillared vaults of the long, many-walled room, then turned and swung his hammer at the nearest dark stone pillar. The column shattered like a candy cane. Cyrus tucked his head as tiny, jagged rocks rattled through the vaults and skipped off his back.

  Gilgamesh raised his arms toward the ceiling, his chest inflating.

  “I am awake, little Nikales!” he bellowed. “Gilgamesh of Uruk is awake, and he will never sleep again!”

  “Your treaty, Gil,” Nolan said. “Rupert will still Bury you.”

  Gilgamesh laughed. “Even now, my treaty is in flames, and at long last. Contained by human law? No true power? That is not immortality.” He pointed his hammer at Cyrus. “I will open myself to the ancient power and gorge on the sweet taste of battle rage. I will wear the children’s skin like a Scythian king!”

  While Cyrus watched, Gil’s eyes rolled back in his head as his muscles seized and writhed beneath his carpeted skin. His jaw unhinged as his arms twisted against their joints, bending against his elbows, bones grinding and cartilage crunching.

  Nolan plunged forward, a knife suddenly in his hand.

  They had to get out. Now. Cyrus slapped his sister hard. “Tigs! Wake up!”

  Nolan rose up and buried his knife in Gil’s chest. Gil didn’t notice, and his spasms didn’t stop. Nolan pounded on the hilt, driving the knife all the way in between his ribs.

  Antigone opened her eyes. She grimaced and sputtered her lips.

  “Sick, sick, sick. I taste like squid.”

  “C’mon!” Cyrus started to drag her off the edge of the bed, then jerked back. A raft of Whip Spiders was bobbing around the bed, pincers and whips stretching toward the mattress, straining for dry land.

  Nolan was wiggling the knife in Gil’s chest. He looked back at Cyrus. “Jump!” he shouted. “Go! Now!”

  Too late.

  Gil’s eyes snapped back down. The hammer swung up. Nolan tried to jump away, but the iron head caught him in the chest. His body rose out of the water in a geyser, tumbled across the surface, and slammed into a wall.

  Gil locked eyes with Cyrus, and he roared.

  Antigone sat up, shocked. “Cy …”

  Gil waded toward them, knife still in his chest, muscles still sliding and twisting unnaturally beneath his skin.

  Behind him, Rupert Greeves splashed into the room carrying a revolver.

  Gil spun around. In a flash, Rupert dove beneath the murky surface. Gil stared at the ripples and raised his hammer, waiting.

  Against the wall, Nolan stood up, sputtering.

  “Go!” Cyrus said. He and his sister jumped off the bed, away from Gil, clearing the island of Whip stings.

  Dirty salt water swallowed them. Knees bent, not standing at full height, Cyrus popped just his face up out of the water. Antigone did the same next to him.

  Gil was stomping through the flood. Raging through stinging Whip Spiders. Feeling for Rupert with his feet, hammer raised and ready. Nolan was sliding through the water around him, just out of hammer range.

  “You’re not immortal, Gil,” Nolan said. “You’ll die. You’ll rot. Your hulk will be dust, a colony of worms.”

  Gil wheeled on him, spitting his words. “Thief. I will knock your head from your body and bury it deep. Is that death enough, Nikales, fruit thief?”

  Nolan stood up straight, arms extended from his sides. “So be it,” he said.

  Gil stepped toward him, cocking his sledge.

  Behind him, Rupert exploded up out of the water. In one geysering motion, he was on Gil’s back, an arm around Gil’s neck, and the long barrel of the revolver in Gil’s ear.

  The gun fired.

  The giant collapsed into the water.

  Cyrus and Antigone stood up slowly.

  Chest heaving, Rupert stood, dripping, above the huge floating body. His gun was still pointed at the back of Gil’s head. He looked over at them. “The Smiths pass another test. Nolan, rope? Chains? Something? He won’t be stunned long.”

  Nolan bounded through the water and ripped a length of rope off a floating plank.

  “Rupe, he went through the rage-warp. A full spasm.”

  Rupert nodded. “Then we have even less time.” He holstered his gun, grabbed Gil’s huge floating arms, and pinned them at the small of his back. Nolan began to tie the thick wrists together. “Cy, Tigs, get out
of the water. Watch the Whips. Get to the stairs.”

  Cyrus and Antigone splashed forward. Nolan and Rupert moved to Gil’s ankles.

  “Won’t he drown?” Antigone asked.

  Nolan snorted.

  “No,” said Rupert. “He won’t.”

  Gil’s floating body shivered. Arms tugged at the ropes. Tree-trunk legs shook as Nolan cinched the knots at his ankles. The huge back arched, but Gil’s face remained submerged.

  The yell rippled the water. Cyrus could feel it in his legs even as he reached the door.

  “And now,” said Rupert, “we run.”

  The four of them were silent in the halls and on the stairs—but for the sound of slapping wet feet and dripping water and occasional spitting and snorting. It wasn’t long before Rupert was leading the strange train through the broad upper hallways. Nolan trailed behind. The damage from the riot was still strewn across the floor, but the cleanup crews were gone.

  And the bells had stopped ringing.

  Outside the Galleria, a large silent crowd was pressed in around the big doorway. Someone was speaking inside.

  Rupert tapped shoulders, and a narrow alley formed for the wet train. A swarm of whispers surrounded them as they pressed through.

  “Rupe, do something,” a woman said. “The treaties gone … they can do anything they like!”

  “He can’t …”

  “… discharged as Avengel.”

  “No Avengels at all now …”

  “Ordo Draconis an ally?”

  “… Hell’s own daftness.”

  “Radu Bey …”

  “… Radu Bey.”

  “Radu …”

  “… Bey.”

  Rupert reached the doorway and stepped inside. Cyrus squeezed in next to him. Antigone hooked her arm in his and wedged herself forward. Nolan hung back.

  “Bellamy Cook!” Rupert shouted.

  Every head in the Galleria turned. The men and women standing in the aisle parted to the sides, leaving an empty path all the way to the dais where Bellamy Cook stood, draped in a long bright robe, intricately embroidered with maps. Old men and women were seated in a half circle behind him.